Fishkeeping - Quarantine

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- - Quarantine (http://www.fishkeepingbanter.com/showthread.php?t=58119)

NetMax wrote,
how bad your stores are, the clerks are ignorant and underpaid, and it
won't get better ......

I would agree there are a lot of stores out there like that, but not
near as many as they were in the past - 15 to 40 years ago.

Then there are many mom & pop stores doing their best, which is much
better than the average home tank......
Finally there are the specialty
stores, who practice a husbandry beyond the average person's abilities ........

This I agree with 100%. I beleave these stores are still much better
than those small chains you talked about. "Many of the smaller chains
are doing very nicely. They know where they want to be, and are slowly
moving that way (live plants in all the tanks, state-of-the-art
filtration, rotating stock for disease control etc)." Mainly because
they hire people that want to learn or already know about keeping and
treating fish.

A common store policy is to medicate with anything which is not
detectable....
Many medications are not colorless (like fungus treatments), so
then it was off to the back room quarantine tanks.

We did things a little different in our stores. The quarantine tanks in
the back were for incomming shipments - all the fish went through a
quarantine preventive _treatment_. This cut or losses from 20 to 25%
down to 2 and 3%. Every once in a while, like any fish store, we did
wind up with a "sick" tank up front in the store. We posted a sign
stating the tank was closed, what disease the fish had, why, and how
to treat the disease. Like you said, most customers took it in stride -
many looked at the diseased fish and bought stand by medications for
their home tank/s. With most of the better mom and pop stores there are
always customers waiting for the owner to get there (opening time) and
they see the fish the same as the owner. With the larger chain stores,
the tanks are cleared of dead fish long before the store opens, so what
you see isn't what you get most of the time. I know of two of the
larger stores around here that do have healthy fish, and clerks that
know what they are doing, but to look at their store, one couldn't tell
the difference between them and the 'bad' stores. The only way to know
the difference is to seek out the clerks that know what they are
talking about.......... Frank

Moments before spontaneously combusting NetMax at
was heard opining:

"Koi-Lo" wrote in message
...

"Nikki" wrote in message
...
I'll second that....My neighborhood fish store is not a chain
(closing this month) a older lady owns it she opened it after she
retired for something to do, and I kind of talked to her the other
day about her closing she said she was not doing to good with
business,

........... However we now have a brand
spanking new PetSupermarket and they're thriving! The fish are
selling as fast as she gets them in (several older women run the
place).
==================
Koi-Lo, as soon as someone posts something about store quality, even
something good about it, I can always count on you jumping in to tell
us how bad your stores are, the clerks are ignorant and underpaid,
and it won't get better because it is the American way. All this
negativity is no good for you. Chill :o)

Hey, ya missed a few posts then! :-) I've mentioned the chains where I
buy my fish *now* and am really pleased with them - but then I seldom ask
the clerks anything. These chains have come a long way in the past 5 years
as far as health and care of the fish go. The store once selling GF with
gill-flukes now is feeding the GF oranges and zucchini's. I buy most of my
GF there. We do have an excellent M&P store in Nashville I've spent a lot
of money in. As for really BAD places it's just that one store.....
*GAG*..... }((((+

I don't doubt what you see
is happening where you are (Tennesee?), but there are thousands of
gorgeous stores in North America. Forget your big chains, though
even they have a few stand-out stores where you see the management is
on the ball.

Those chains *are* the ones that are succeeding HERE. For some reason the
M&P places didn't last. That was the point. Not that they themselves were
bad or stupid people,.... people would rather buy fish where they could get
them cheaper in the other larger town with the chains (which weren't that
great back then) or go to the Wally*Worlds (need I say more?). The chains
and WM stores were too much competition. And getting to know a few of the
owners while they were still in business it was obvious they loved dealing
with the fish but simply weren't overly knowledgeable. I see people on
these NGs with much more knowledge than those folks had - sincere as they
may have been.

Many of the smaller chains are doing very nicely. They
know where they want to be, and are slowly moving that way (live
plants in all the tanks, state-of-the-art filtration, rotating stock
for disease control etc). Then there are many mom & pop stores doing
their best, which is much better than the average home tank. Finally
there are the specialty stores, who practice a husbandry beyond the
average person's abilities because of the value of their stock,
whether it is Discus, Arrowanas or Koi.

We have one like that. That's where I buy most of my live plants and bought
90% of my koi. He even has UV lights the tank water runs through.....
fantastic place! :-)

At least you now have one good store which you can frequent. Try to
stay out of all the others, especially that other one we both know
about (W**-***t), it's bad for your health ;~).

........ I wish
they'd just concentrate on the birds and small animals and get rid of
all their diseased tanks of fish.

A common store policy is to medicate with anything which is not
detectable. I liked it when we got in dark-blue painted tanks. I
could medicate just after closing, and the color would not be evident
by morning. Many medications are not colorless (like fungus
treatments), so then it was off to the back room quarantine tanks. I
kept six Q-tanks running, and I would have 4 typically in operation,
and sometimes I would double them up (fish from different tanks with
different diseases, which were both covered by the meds in use.

Which I think is great. I wish the chains allowed the stores to keep these
Q or H (hospital) tanks in the back room.

In an extreme case (the EUS discussed in another thread), I treated
the display tank, but I took a sheet of black background and pasted
it on the front of the wall tank with a sign "shhh hospital tank,
fish may be sleeping". Most customers took it in stride and didn't
hold it against us for having 'diseased' fish. A few said they were
not coming back because of it. C'est la vie. The occasional kid
pealed back a corner to look into the yellow water, but the fish were
all swimming around quite oblivious to it. Anyways, my long winded
point... not all meds are color-less. I think I have to learn
brevity. --
www.NetMax.tk

LOL!!! I enjoy even your long winded posts. There's always something to
learn.
--

Koi-Lo.... frugal ponding since 1995...
Aquariums since 1952
My Pond & Aquarium Pages:
http://tinyurl.com/9do58
~~~ }((((o ~~~ }{{{{o ~~~ }(((((o

"Frank" wrote in message
ups.com...
NetMax wrote,
how bad your stores are, the clerks are ignorant and underpaid, and it
won't get better ......

I would agree there are a lot of stores out there like that, but not
near as many as they were in the past - 15 to 40 years ago.

Then there are many mom & pop stores doing their best, which is much
better than the average home tank......
Finally there are the specialty
stores, who practice a husbandry beyond the average person's abilities
........

This I agree with 100%. I beleave these stores are still much better
than those small chains you talked about. "Many of the smaller chains
are doing very nicely. They know where they want to be, and are slowly
moving that way (live plants in all the tanks, state-of-the-art
filtration, rotating stock for disease control etc)." Mainly because
they hire people that want to learn or already know about keeping and
treating fish.

A common store policy is to medicate with anything which is not
detectable....
Many medications are not colorless (like fungus treatments), so
then it was off to the back room quarantine tanks.

We did things a little different in our stores. The quarantine tanks in
the back were for incomming shipments - all the fish went through a
quarantine preventive _treatment_. This cut or losses from 20 to 25%
down to 2 and 3%. Every once in a while, like any fish store, we did
wind up with a "sick" tank up front in the store. We posted a sign
stating the tank was closed, what disease the fish had, why, and how
to treat the disease. Like you said, most customers took it in stride -
many looked at the diseased fish and bought stand by medications for
their home tank/s. With most of the better mom and pop stores there are
always customers waiting for the owner to get there (opening time) and
they see the fish the same as the owner. With the larger chain stores,
the tanks are cleared of dead fish long before the store opens, so what
you see isn't what you get most of the time. I know of two of the
larger stores around here that do have healthy fish, and clerks that
know what they are doing, but to look at their store, one couldn't tell
the difference between them and the 'bad' stores. The only way to know
the difference is to seek out the clerks that know what they are
talking about.......... Frank

We certainly did do things differently. I was averaging 3 deliveries a
week, and I could never have enough tanks to do any kind of preventative
isolation. We approached it in 2 ways.

At the supplier end, I visited the importers and brokers to see their
tanks and their method of operation. With that human contact made, they
understood my desire/need for quality, so anything they received which
was suspect (too many losses in their incoming delivery) would NOT be
delivered to me. I always over-ordered to balance this routine
shortfall. They also didn't fill my local deliveries with filler fish
(substitutes), and I provided them a standing list for import fillers.
For those unfamiliar with this, the cost of transporting fish is mostly
the airfreight volume of the boxes and the custom inspections. No one
ships a box partially filled, however they are never able to satisfy 100%
of your order due to local weather and breeding conditions in the country
of origin, so they will slip in 'fillers'. Good fillers, if you have
specified what the acceptable fillers are, bad ones if you don't (like
dyed fish). In my case, I restricted them to a long list of acceptable
substitutes (which were generally hard to find ;~), and if they were
unable to find them, their profit margins dropped (less fish in the box
to spread costs), so they worked hard to keep me happy. For my more
custom orders (yes, I was also a pita with my special requests), the
importers/brokers would put them in holding tanks for either 1 or 2 weeks
(skipping 1 or 2 delivery runs), until the stock was strong enough to
travel.

Inside the store, we rotated stock around, so the new delivery of danios
went into tank #46, even though #44 was where I was selling danios from.
After the fish were installed, I would not put up their prices. My
cardinal rule for all our associates "no price tag, no sale, no
exceptions". Then I would monitor them until I was satisfied, and then
would put up a price tag. This left the display tanks always looking
filled (which increased sales), but allowed me a degree of quarantine
(they were individually filtered, each with their own nets and algae
scrubbers, to reduce cross-contamination). Most tanks had 1 to 5 species
and were naturally planted as well. It just looked a little odd to have
multiple tanks with overlapping species, but to the staff, they were
treated as completely different fish (ie: last week's Cardinals from the
Caribbean are different from this week's Cardinals from Brazil). If more
than one supplier send identical substitutes (which did happen), I could
find myself with 3 tanks of the same but different fish ;~).

I won't pretend that any of this would replace a proper quarantine by the
customer. 85% of the fish went on sale 1 or 2 days after delivery (or a
bit longer until I had a shift as I was the only one blessing them for
sale). Maybe 10% after 3-4 days (ie: Discus, Rams, Koi, Neons,
Cardinals) and the last 5% after a couple of weeks (ie: Monos, Clown
loaches, Bala sharks, Chocolate gouramis).

This system felt like a good compromise between the required economics of
selling fish and proper husbandry, maintaining about 2-3% of tanks
off-sale while being medicated. I don't think I could have pushed the
system further, and I routinely had to become more conservative as both
ends of the supply chain were affected by seasonal variations, causing
diseases at their end, and transport problems at my end in the winter
months. It was an interesting business. Full of surprises.
--
www.NetMax.tk

NetMax wrote,
We certainly did do things differently.

You can say that again! Back then, we opened our first store on a shoe
string. If it wasn't for all the other stores trying to put us out of
business, we never would have made it. They all got togeather and told
the wholesale outlets if they sold to us, they would get togeather and
buy from their supplyers, forcing us to buy over seas. Our first
shipment was in the middle of the winter - ice and snow storm shut down
the airport for over 20 hours. We had to accept half our order (other
half was on a different plane) or have our grand opening with no fish.
I guess it's still the same way today - if you turned down the order,
you didn't get any of it. If you accept part of it, you paided for all
of it, and they wouldn't let you open any of it untill it was paided
for. Well, to make a long story short, the other wholesale outlets that
supplyed St. Louis and the greater area, did not accept their orders
and we bought their shipments for the price of the foam boxs they were
in - 1000.00s of dollars of fish (birds, snakes and small animals) for
just over $100.00. Best part, the airport would call us if anyone
turned down their live fish or animal orders from then on. Sure loved
those winters back then ;-)

It was an interesting business. Full of surprises.

you can say that again also;-) .............. Frank

On 10 Mar 2006 23:19:16 -0800, "Frank"
wrote:

NetMax wrote,
We certainly did do things differently.

You can say that again! Back then, we opened our first store on a shoe
string. If it wasn't for all the other stores trying to put us out of
business, we never would have made it. They all got togeather and told
the wholesale outlets if they sold to us, they would get togeather and
buy from their supplyers, forcing us to buy over seas. Our first
shipment was in the middle of the winter - ice and snow storm shut down
the airport for over 20 hours. We had to accept half our order (other
half was on a different plane) or have our grand opening with no fish.
I guess it's still the same way today - if you turned down the order,
you didn't get any of it. If you accept part of it, you paided for all
of it, and they wouldn't let you open any of it untill it was paided
for. Well, to make a long story short, the other wholesale outlets that
supplyed St. Louis and the greater area, did not accept their orders
and we bought their shipments for the price of the foam boxs they were
in - 1000.00s of dollars of fish (birds, snakes and small animals) for
just over $100.00. Best part, the airport would call us if anyone
turned down their live fish or animal orders from then on. Sure loved
those winters back then ;-)

It was an interesting business. Full of surprises.

you can say that again also;-) .............. Frank

Does anyone know where WalMart gets their fish? Are they buying from
the same suppliers as everyone else, or have they purchased their own
fish farms?

-- Mister Gardener

Mr. Gardener wrote:
On 10 Mar 2006 23:19:16 -0800, "Frank"
wrote:

NetMax wrote,

We certainly did do things differently.

You can say that again! Back then, we opened our first store on a shoe
string. If it wasn't for all the other stores trying to put us out of
business, we never would have made it. They all got togeather and told
the wholesale outlets if they sold to us, they would get togeather and
buy from their supplyers, forcing us to buy over seas. Our first
shipment was in the middle of the winter - ice and snow storm shut down
the airport for over 20 hours. We had to accept half our order (other
half was on a different plane) or have our grand opening with no fish.
I guess it's still the same way today - if you turned down the order,
you didn't get any of it. If you accept part of it, you paided for all
of it, and they wouldn't let you open any of it untill it was paided
for. Well, to make a long story short, the other wholesale outlets that
supplyed St. Louis and the greater area, did not accept their orders
and we bought their shipments for the price of the foam boxs they were
in - 1000.00s of dollars of fish (birds, snakes and small animals) for
just over $100.00. Best part, the airport would call us if anyone
turned down their live fish or animal orders from then on. Sure loved
those winters back then ;-)

It was an interesting business. Full of surprises.

you can say that again also;-) .............. Frank

Does anyone know where WalMart gets their fish? Are they buying from
the same suppliers as everyone else, or have they purchased their own
fish farms?

-- Mister Gardener

If you've got a good relationship with the staff there I suggest you ask
them...the guys were I go routinely get questioned by me as to where the
fish originate from...

Gill

On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 14:13:38 +0000, Gill Passman
wrote:

Mr. Gardener wrote:
On 10 Mar 2006 23:19:16 -0800, "Frank"
wrote:

NetMax wrote,

We certainly did do things differently.

You can say that again! Back then, we opened our first store on a shoe
string. If it wasn't for all the other stores trying to put us out of
business, we never would have made it. They all got togeather and told
the wholesale outlets if they sold to us, they would get togeather and
buy from their supplyers, forcing us to buy over seas. Our first
shipment was in the middle of the winter - ice and snow storm shut down
the airport for over 20 hours. We had to accept half our order (other
half was on a different plane) or have our grand opening with no fish.
I guess it's still the same way today - if you turned down the order,
you didn't get any of it. If you accept part of it, you paided for all
of it, and they wouldn't let you open any of it untill it was paided
for. Well, to make a long story short, the other wholesale outlets that
supplyed St. Louis and the greater area, did not accept their orders
and we bought their shipments for the price of the foam boxs they were
in - 1000.00s of dollars of fish (birds, snakes and small animals) for
just over $100.00. Best part, the airport would call us if anyone
turned down their live fish or animal orders from then on. Sure loved
those winters back then ;-)

It was an interesting business. Full of surprises.

you can say that again also;-) .............. Frank

Does anyone know where WalMart gets their fish? Are they buying from
the same suppliers as everyone else, or have they purchased their own
fish farms?

-- Mister Gardener

If you've got a good relationship with the staff there I suggest you ask
them...the guys were I go routinely get questioned by me as to where the
fish originate from...

Gill

No relationship. I visit WalMart 3 or 4 times a year to buy a certain
recordable cd that I'm unable to find anywhere else. The only pet
products I buy in large quantities is dog food and cat pan litter, and
WalMart's prices are no lower than the grocer's down the street from
me. Nope. Walmart is a 50 mile round trip, so I think long and hard
before I make that drive.

-- Mister Gardener

On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 20:31:14 -0000, FishNoob
wrote:

In article ,
says...
I think it's wonderful that you've found a store that quarantines
their fish before selling them. I've heard they exist, but I've never
found one. Do you have a good feeling about them, have you done
business with them before, can you believe them?

Well, we went to buy our fish, and I feel even better about this
store than I did before.

I talked to one of the senior staff - I think she might be one of the
owners. I hung around in the store for over an hour, just looking at
things and letting my kids explore (I had all five with me) and the
staff were perfectly willing to chat with all of us and answer
questions. My 6-year-old went straight up to the counter when we went
in and asked if they had any sharks - the staff member then took
about five minutes walking around the store and pointing out all the
different sharks they had.

They import weekly - they don't use a local supplier at all. They
quarantine everything for a minimum of two weeks - longer if they
have any suspicions about anything, but always at least two weeks.
They have a 900-tank quarantine facility - I didn't ask to see it
(got distracted by a kid and some fish LOL) but I think it might be
off-site - they're currently looking for a new location because they
need a bigger building. I didn't see any tanks under treatment in the
shop itself, although I noticed one that was empty. They don't treat
the quarantined fish routinely, just if they need it.

Their stock *all* looks good - I didn't see even one fish that looked
sickly. The tanks are all clean and well cared-for. They have three
separate areas - one for tropical, one for marine and one for ponds -
plus the second floor where they sell tanks and other larger pieces
of equipment. They talk about the fish with affection - telling us
about the character of one large fish who comes out to feed and then
goes and "lies down" again. They knew we were there for three clown
loaches, and didn't put on any pressure to buy anything more - though
we did buy some food, and some other fish...

I am really impressed by this place - they've a great reputation, and
I think it's well-deserved.

Do you think they would be interested in opening a branch in Maine,
USA?

-- Mister Gardener