WOW!!!
Someone told me about this thread today at the shop.
Chuck,
Honestly, are you F*@#!%G kidding me? What you are proposing is completely impossible to do and be 100% perfect. Or the end result would be an $80 Acropora costing at least $200. There is not (to my knowledge) a single Wholesaler that quarantines their livestock for any serious period of time. This industry is in today out tomorrow, and yes that is a big problem. And many LFS and Organizations (MAC, AMDA, etc.) are trying to change this. The bigger problem lies in the cost to do all that you have stated. If I was to try to comply completely with your "Facts" I would lose a ton of money period. I would rather just not carry SPS. We all do our best to inspect and check then quarantine any livestock that is not 100%. If not then we(LFS)would not be in business, we would have lost our entire systems long ago, It is only in our best interest to do this. Now I have been to and worked at plenty of LFS where the staff is not knowledgable enough to know what to even look for. Now are you going to march into all (thousands and thousands) of those LFS and demend and enforce these conditions? Frankly, I think they would laugh at you and go on with business as usual. Especially because (and this is unfortunate) you/we are among the very small percent of our LFS actual customer base. Most customers are uneducated about their tanks and livestock. And I can tell you from years of experience that more than 60% of the hobbyists could care less. Anyone that knows me will tell ya. I am more than glad to talk to and educate any customer. Many times as I am catching livestock I try and educate the customer briefly on what they are buying, and most of the time they could care less what I am saying or literally walk away and look for the next thing to purchase. (kind of depresses me sometimes
)
I would love to see you open a shop. You would be closed in less than a
year. If you could even get enough money together to open a good shop and do it right (about 2 million$) the overhead is outrageous, electricity, water, staff, stock, etc. And just how long it would take you to see any kind of return on that initial investment. Especially enforcing your facts and policies. In a perfect world it would work and it would be great, and I would have already opened that shop
lol. But we do not live in a perfect world. The bottom line is that we are dealing with living organisms here. There are so many variables involved.
My prime example of why we can not garauntee any livestock.
Customer buys X, Y, Z. Then continues on with their day makes a few stops leaves the bags in the car on the front seat. Customer comes back 2 days later X & Z are dead, I want my money back. Now, what do you do? Give the customer a refund? If they left it in a cold/hot car for a hour or so, who's fault is it that X and Z are dead? Living things are a very delicate commodity. When a wholesaler or LFS Tranships(gets livestock direct from point of origin) there is usually 5% or less compensation for any DOA livestock, never mind if it dies a few days after you get it. And any compensation is stricktly for the actual cost of the item, when the shipping can cost 3-4 times as much as the item (no reibursment for the shipping)
So to be 100% honest you will never get rich or barely make a living owning an LFS especially if you rely on Livestock. LFS make money on drygoods (they don't die!) Now with all these internet sites selling drygoods for less than most LFS pay for the same product, you will see less and less LFS around. (very sad)
I thought the purpose of this thread is to make people aware of the Acro Flatworms, and discuss them and posible methods for eradication, and not to bash LFS and the industry. We definately have a lot to learn about these nasty worms. But as with everything we will have to learn how to deal with them. Most likely as soon as we figure out how to manage these, something else will be infesting our tanks.
If any one has any infested corals they would like to donate, I have been talking with a couple of people and would like to try a few things out on them and the eggs.
-B-
sorry for any spelling or grammer errors. lol