LFS....so glad I am where I am at!

We all complain about the quality of the LFS lately...or at least I have. It seems like they are having higher rates of RTN, cyano, dino etc, and tanks look horrible compared to what they used to. It has gotten so I have not bought an SPS from anybody in a couple months cause of it.

However I volunteered to take a couple pugs from a rescue to their new owners. I will not say where I went but today I drove 560 miles.

Anyway I wanted to stop and look at some LFS on the way. I went online and found a couple addresses of some. I also looked for their club but they did not have one.

I stopped in at this one store (not many stores to choose from). I should have known when I walked in that it was no good. It was a privately owned store that had every single type of animal possible. Puppies, kittens, freshwater, saltwater, snakes, spiders, rodents....whatever can be sold was sold.

They had a tank that every coral in there was $50.00. Nothing special...just some leathers etc. There was this green think that looked like a green feathery thing...I have never seen it before. I asked the worker what it was..she told me it was an emerald crab. I said...not that feathery thing. Yeah it is a crab. I should have bought it cause it was gorgeous but they did not know what it was and I did not.

She said...here come look at this neatest thing we just got in...it is a spider of some sort. "look, it grows corals out of its shell" Playing dumb I asked if it was reef safe and OH YEAH, we have it in our reef tank, and it keeps growing new corals! OK it is a decorator crab and the "new corals" it was growing was from the polyps it was taking off of their corals.

I said thanks..I will just look around. I see the usual stuff..yellow tangs galore, some clowns etc. I go to the back and they have this coral bandit shark in a 20L tank. The poor shark is bent in half in the tank. And in the middle of the tank they have this critter box. I look at it closer and it is a peacock mantis. However the peacock mantis was no more...all it was was the shell of a decaying animal. There was no sand in the tank that these two are in, no rock in the critter tank, and definately NO ROOM for either one of those animals.

If I had the money, and been able to get back home prior to the LFS closing I would have bought that shark and taken it to my LFS where they have the capability to care for it. But 1. I was not going to get home in time, and 2. I did not want to encourage the store by buying anything.

I did make mention to the worker that the shark is too big for that tank and before I could finish to tell her about hte peacock she said something and walked off.

I will never again complain about the quality of animals in my LFS. They might do some things that I question, but they never would do something like this!

 

Crimony! That's a shocking story to read indeed. I'm glad my LFS is run by a super passionate fella that would rather have your repeat business than selling you something you don't need. This story makes me wanna buy my LFS owner, Andreas a beer or two!

I think you made the right call in not buying the shark. It must have been hard to do at first, but you're right in thinking that it would only encourage them.