Today I went to a store and an arab looking man stood beside me checking some large stones for his 2 meter tank as he told me. He just didn't know what fish came along with that tank. For he bought a tank all inclusive from someone. He told me he would show me a photo of those fish. But it turned out that those photos were on his wife's phone. So, he googled for some photos. And it turned out to be Malawi cichlids. 17 Fish to be precise. But he likes rocks in a tank. So, I told him that that was a good start. But there weren't that much stones available of a certain size. The former owner had only plastic plants in the tank. The store owner told him that they weren't getting any large stones anymore. Anyways, I don't understand Arabic but it seemed to me that this man was cursing in Arabic to the store owner for not having more stones. I told the man to calm down which he surprisingly did. Then he started to say something in his own language to me. I told him that I didn't speak nor understood Arabic. I did recognize some words for I've been to the Middle-East a couple of times. I asked him if he has ever kept a fishtank before. And he said no. But he's seen an episode of "Tanked" on Animal planet and that made him want to have a tank. He did show me a photo of a can of fish food he bought. And while I already knew that he bought Malawi cichlids, I had to tell him that he bought fishfood for goldfish instead of cichlids. I told him to do some research how to keep cichlids well. But he told me that he had problems to read Dutch and English. I asked the store owner to come back to us. And let the man offer his apologies to the store owner. And I was able to make the deal that the store owner would go to this man's place to see what he would need for this tank. And what I heard from this man was that all those fish were in buckets with a lid at his place. So, I asked the store owner if he could go there today in order to keep those fish well. For the man told me that those fish were already two days in those buckets. This is a good example of someone who just doesn't know what he was doing... So, it's very important to think first really well before taking any actions...
