Choose carefully

[GaryE]

Buying online from random companies sure is convenient, but I am seeing a lot of threads here where people have received deformed or unhealthy fish, mixed with the healthy ones. The sellers give you the number of fish you've ordered. There is often no quality control.
If you go to a store to buy fish, you can have an active input into what fish you get. Choose carefully. Study the tank. If the seller nets a fish that looks atypical, refuse it politely. If the fish looks diseased, don't buy from the aquarium. It doesn't matter how much you want the species. Other stores will have it, or you can wait til the next shipment comes in.
If you take pity on a fish, don't put it in your main tank. Have a tank for it, alone. It sounds harsh, but that guppy with the bent spine can have communicable TB, or a bacterial, parasitic or viral infection that can kill your entire tank.
Years ago when I caught fish for a store, I tried to sell the best fish. The owner of the store would refuse to pay for poor specimens, and the wholesalers he dealt with respected him. We got very few sickly fish. But if a customer was passive - a person who asked for 6 swordtails and then started looking at other tanks, etc, they got the first six fish caught. If they paid attention, I was instructed to net trap the fish against the glass and let the customer approve of each individual. We survived on regular, repeat customers buying healthy fish and returning again and again for food, supplies, etc. The business is very different now, but the need to pay attention, say yes and no, and to work with the person with the net is still as important. When you go to a store, make your own choices, carefully. Talk with the seller.

 

[Ichthys]

I’m always surprised by people who think it’s an imposition to choose the individual fish they want. I always do. Fish shops have huge overheads (electricity, wages) before they even start to make a profit, and if pushed, they’ll always catch the ones you want rather than lose a sale.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

I’m always surprised by people who think it’s an imposition to choose the individual fish they want. I always do. Fish shops have huge overheads (electricity, wages) before they even start to make a profit, and if pushed, they’ll always catch the ones you want rather than lose a sale.

I did have great fun while browsing and choosing my own fish watching a fish store employee trying to catch some kuhli loaches for another customer, but they'd put the loaches into a general mixed tank with lots of other fish - and a fairly thick sand substrate.

He was there for a long time, just trying to catch one. We were all laughing at his difficulty, haha, couldn't help it!

 

[Ichthys]

I did have great fun while browsing and choosing my own fish watching a fish store employee trying to catch some kuhli loaches for another customer, but they'd put the loaches into a general mixed tank with lots of other fish - and a fairly thick sand substrate.

He was there for a long time, just trying to catch one. We were all laughing at his difficulty, haha, couldn't help it!

There are “tricks of the trade” for certain fish. For Kuhlies, give them half a coconut shell and 99% will be in it at any given time. Then all you do is lift it up quickly and get most of them in the net.

 

[Magnum Man]

I have gotten really picky with who I mail order fish from ( we have no small local shops... only 1 semi local shop is a franchise, I walked in one night last week... they had just gotten fish in that morning, and nearly every tank still had dead fish in them )... they have started to get some pretty interesting fish, but I've yet to buy anything but Rosy minnows for feeders, and I've been trying to keep those in a holding tank for a week, before feeding them, but would rather buy the cheapest platy's from a really good on line seller, although the cost is lots more... 20 cents for Rosie's and 5 dollars for platy's

a little bit of a plug for my favorite on line seller ( Dan's Fish ) they hold and or treat as needed any fish, before they sell them, only buy their stock from the best wholesalers, and pack their fish one to a bag... this is much more work than a typical on line seller goes through... buying 8 Rummy Nose tetras, came in 8 separate bags... it's pretty concerning when fish come in multiple fish in one bag, and several are dead in the bag...

I'll also push the need to have a (few ) quarantine / hospital tank (s) ... even if you went to that semi local shop a day or two after they received fish, & they finally had the time to fish out all the dead ones, before you walk in, you may pick the best fish, but it could have been exposed to a half dozen dead fish for a day or two, before you walked in... right now Dan's Fish, are the only fish I would add to a nearly done tank... I did get Ich in a 55 gallon that wasn't anywhere close to "done" that I added fish to, that didn't look the best, from an average ( not Dan's ) mail order supplier... & the Ich & treatment cost me several fish that did not survive...

 

[Back in the fold]

I did have great fun while browsing and choosing my own fish watching a fish store employee trying to catch some kuhli loaches for another customer, but they'd put the loaches into a general mixed tank with lots of other fish - and a fairly thick sand substrate.

He was there for a long time, just trying to catch one. We were all laughing at his difficulty, haha, couldn't help it!

Watch the look on a pet shop clerks face when you tell them you want to buy a Kuhlii Loach . They always look so defeated .

 

[GaryE]

Dan's is good. I have a Canadian seller I respect absolutely. But most of the time when we see sellers online, we are fumbling in the dark. A lot of people are looking for cheap fish, and they get them. Boy, do they get them.

There's a young guy with a shop where I used to live. His fish, in the shop, are great. His choice of Corydoras is always excellent, and his prices are fair. His knowledge of shipping isn't great, so I only buy from him in person. I look at his lists sometimes and my credit card twitches. I once requested he pack a certain fish as it must be packed. He didn't, and it died. He refunded the fish, but the shipping was a bigger cost (shipping in Canada is expensive - a big country with a dangerous climate for tropical fish). Plus, the fish should not have died.

I used to dread when people said "there's one zebra danio I like the look of..."

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

I used to dread when people said "there's one zebra danio I like the look of..."

To be fair, if I were buying a school of some small fast fish, like zebra danios, green neons, and the tank was packed full of them and they appear healthy, that's the exception I'd make to the 'picking out individuals' rule. Only because by the time I'd pointed out a specific one, the whole tank will have reacted and swam around in a mad panic, and that individual is lost among the school of them. Just like the way it works in the wild, I guess, and why there is safety in numbers.

But in a case like that, I'd ask them to bag the number I wanted, and aim for the male/female ratio I'm after, if applicable, then once they've bagged those, I'd examine that bag very closely for any that don't look great, reject any I don't like the look of, and ask them to catch different ones, and examine those replacement fish carefully before they're added to the bag.

No decent store is going to object to that. You're paying for these fish, you absolutely have a right to make sure you're getting healthy, quality individuals, and it's much harder to get a replacement if you've not looked at the bag, taken them home, only to find one sinking to the bottom or going belly up, then asking the store for a replacement.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Over the years I have likely bought about $35,000 worth of fish. Most of that was paid directly to breeders or serious collectors. My guess is of the total I have spent under $500 from stores. As for shipped in fish from unknown sources that number is about $1,000 of less. Most of them were OK. The worst fish (healthwise) I have acquired over the years came from either stores or one order from LiveAquaria.com. It was poorly packed in winter and almost all of the biox contents were DOA or dead in under 24 hours. I got a full refund.

I have received fish which were in the wild 10 days or fewer before they came to me. I have bought fish as imports, wholesale and from sellers at weekend fish events or fish club auctions. The latter have always been healthy and I have never lost fish from a club member within a short time of getting them indicating they were not healthy or were actually sick when I got them.

I have had Ich twice in 23+ years and both times fish arrived with it. One from an online seller on Aquabid and the other time they had it when I did one of my rare buys from a store.

That said, there was one store where I was willing to buy their fish and skip Q. This is something I did not do often at all. But this store was superb. In order to get a job working there one must pass an extensive written test on general knowledge re fish etc. All their tanks are clean, free of dead fish or even fish that do not look anyway less than perfectly healthy. The problem with this store are it's prices which are as high as any I have seen. On weekend the Mecerdes and Beamers are usually tripple parked out front. The average customer doesn't ask how much things cost, they just buy. I am not that wealthy by a long shot.

Remember, one fish arriving healthy is worth at least 3 DOAS.