My View
I completely disagree at least with the coral portion of your argument. This is the kind of mindset, in my opinion, that allows the LFS people to be lax and gives them cart blanche to sell SPS corals without any responsibility. The reasoning goes like this: I buy a coral and check it over and see no eggs or flatworms although there are a few worms on it that are hidden (note these flatworms are hard to see in their initial stages even for the LFS people). I put the coral in a quarantine tank at home and wait for a month and voila, the worms grow from their small juvenile state to adults and they lay eggs on the coral.
Now, remember it has been weeks or even a month since I bought the coral. I remove it from my quarantine tank and bring it to the LFS. I challenge all LFSs right here and now to take all of these infested corals back given that they were quarantined at home by me or other SPS owners.....I do not think they would accept this challenge. If they will...I stand corrected and an interim solution is born, at least until a safe kill agent is found.
But what then does the LFS do with the infested coral? Throw it out and lose $...Not likely. So, they will have no choice but to impose strict quarantine at the LFS level, wholesaler level or higher. Maybe prices go up and maybe corals are harder to get, but so be it until a kill agent is found for these pests. If the LFSs and wholesalers do not do quarantine and/or do not replace corals, then we all lose and since we pay for the corals we are the only one who lose. They will keep selling as though bussiness as usual and we all lose. The wholesalers and higher will also run in "bussiness as usual" mode. It is time to make everyone lose so that quarantining becomes a regular practice at the LFS and higher levels at least until a kill agent is found. The LFSs have the carrot...us, we are willing to spend $50 for a tort frag or $100 for our favorite coral or more! They have the luxury of a huge instantaneous customer base with the BRS and RC sponsorship program. It is time to employ the stick and make LFSs as well as their suppliers accept the fact that we will not buy infested corals and waste our money. This could motivate them to more quickly impose stricter protocols for handling all marine life...which is not a bad thing, no? If we stop buying, believe me the LFSs and above will find many creative solutions. If we keep buying and accept responsibility for these pests, at best some shops will quarantine, some will not, some may knowingly sell you diseased organisms, some may unwittingly sell diseased organsims....but either way, you lose, unless a really liberal return policy is adopted.
That being said, everyone should still quarantine all of their purchases, corals and fish alike. This will catch the 1 or 5 or 10 or 20 % of diseased marine life that is not found at the higher levels. I agree that the LFSs can't do everything but they must champion the effort (Look who solved the Red Bug problem...ORA!) I also encourage everyone to look for a cure and read up on these pests. Maybe we could form a "tiger team" consisting of biologists, chemists, engineers, and others to work to find a kill agent. The Tiger Team could work off of donations in the same way that Eric Borneman and Inland Reef funded their studies. I volunteer to set this up if anyone is interested.
We need to take action now and stop accepting the status quo.
Nate, I have some beautiful colonies that are all worm free....would you like to stop by and buy some?
NateHanson said:
While I agree that we should encourage the LFS to quarantine and work on finding a cure, I think we as a club and individual reefers need to be primarily responsible for doing both of these things for our selves. Why hope that the LFS quarantines and works many hard hours to research a cure, when we could take responsibility ourselves and do the same?
I'm certainly not saying that the LFS shouldn't be a part of solving this problem, but I think a substantial or even predominant portion of the responsibility should be taken up by the club and by individual consumers. I think the most that can be required of a vendor is that they are vigilant and up-front with customers about flatworms, and make a point of not selling corals that they know or suspect are infested with this or any other pest.
Take the example of buying a fish. It's not entirely uncommon that a fish dies a month or two after being acclimated. I recall a number of members recently had this happen to CBB. The cause of death is often unknown, and there was no indication of a problem when the fish was bought, or even for many weeks afterwards. If this sort of problem which can't be detected at time of sale, and doesn't become evident until months after the sale, how can the LFS be expected to bear responsibility for it? Should they individually quarantine all fish for 8 weeks? Should there be a month-viability guarantee? To me all of these solutions are impractical. The consumer has to bear some of the risk involved in keeping these delicate creatures. Personally I think we're lucky to have vendors both locally and online, who are willing to replace livestock for a couple days after purchase. Asking more than that, in my mind, is not reasonable.
That's the way I see it anyways.
Nate
