Am curious to know where people are having the greatest success with buying fish.
My experience with LFS in the greater Boston area is most bad. It seems like all the LFS has the same strategy: get a big order in Thursday/Friday and hope to sell out over the weekend before the fish die. When I buy from a LFS on the weekend I loose 75% by Tuesday/Wednesday. The exception to this is captive bred or from a BRS member, which always do well in my established tank.
To give a recent example, I recently paid $100 for 5 fish from a LFS in Southern NH I will not mention by name. Nothing fancy, your common variety clown fish, Benghai cardinal, flasher wrasse, fire fish. By Tuesday only one fish (the ocellaris clown captive bred) was alive, everything else did not make it. I hatch baby brine, I feed white worms, I feed 3 times per day, I bend over backwards to care for my fish - very little that is not captive bred survived.
Oddly, over the last 2 years my best survival has come from Aquatic Treasures in Watertown - the place is a total cesspool but with low turnover of wildlife because not a lot people shop there. Anything that can survive 2 weeks there has a 100% survival rate in my tank. Many of my longest lived fish came from there.
To be honest, I do not quarantine and have never lost very few fish from overt disease. I am a big believer is life foods and feed a ton in my display - fish either seem to love it or perish. I have have not lost "hard species" like mardarins, pipefish or scooter dragonets which all love my tank.
Are other members have the same experience? Amy curious to know what works for others in the area.
My experience with LFS in the greater Boston area is most bad. It seems like all the LFS has the same strategy: get a big order in Thursday/Friday and hope to sell out over the weekend before the fish die. When I buy from a LFS on the weekend I loose 75% by Tuesday/Wednesday. The exception to this is captive bred or from a BRS member, which always do well in my established tank.
To give a recent example, I recently paid $100 for 5 fish from a LFS in Southern NH I will not mention by name. Nothing fancy, your common variety clown fish, Benghai cardinal, flasher wrasse, fire fish. By Tuesday only one fish (the ocellaris clown captive bred) was alive, everything else did not make it. I hatch baby brine, I feed white worms, I feed 3 times per day, I bend over backwards to care for my fish - very little that is not captive bred survived.
Oddly, over the last 2 years my best survival has come from Aquatic Treasures in Watertown - the place is a total cesspool but with low turnover of wildlife because not a lot people shop there. Anything that can survive 2 weeks there has a 100% survival rate in my tank. Many of my longest lived fish came from there.
To be honest, I do not quarantine and have never lost very few fish from overt disease. I am a big believer is life foods and feed a ton in my display - fish either seem to love it or perish. I have have not lost "hard species" like mardarins, pipefish or scooter dragonets which all love my tank.
Are other members have the same experience? Amy curious to know what works for others in the area.