Does life in fish vendors’ tanks affect long term health of their (our) fish?

[gwand]

Two well respected fish vendors, The Wet Spot and Dan’s Fish have wildly disparate water hardness. The GH of the Wet Spot water is 32 ppm. Yet they house a magnificent and large variety of East African cichlids and many other hard water species. Dan’s water is liquid rock. He houses a huge variety of soft water fish. What effect does this have on the longevity of the fish we purchase from either vendor? I assume any injuries incurred would depend on how long the fishes lived in water they were not suited for prior to sale. BTW. I buy almost exclusively from both vendors.

 

[Naughts]

Do the stores there not adjust water hardness according to species?
If the fish were held for a long time in inappropriate parameters their health could suffer. But there is likely to be a fast turnover at those shops.

 

[Colin_T]

If the soft water fish are in hard water for more than a month they are more likely to have issues. The less time they spend in the wrong conditions, the better it is for their long term health.

 

[GaryE]

If you have soft water, getting minerals into it is easy. So the source water at the Wet Spot wouldn't worry me. It's going the other way that gives issues. If you start with very hard water, and you handle a lot of fish, you would need a large RO system, and time spent on water management.

The people and companies that take on the rare fish business sell expensive fish, relative to what we pay for mass produced farm fish. There are high costs connected to sourcing uncommon fish, but their needs also add up.

 

[emeraldking]

If I look at a serious number of stores, most tanks will have the same water parameters in all tanks. This is also one of the reasons why I frequently bad fish in there... Unfortunately, they don't seem to care as long as they are able to sell those fish. And the most hypocrite thing is that they tell the customer how to acclimatize them when they bring those fish home.

 

[MaloK]

The best Seller I ever saw, simply bred them all on site. Water hardness was primordial and I never saw a water change made that wasn't under supervision of the Master Keeper. And they where running bare bottoms all the way.

We have a store like that, called Quebec Cichlides And the quality and health of their stock is outstanding. And they run a large part of their tanks bare bottoms.

For me during transition the least contact with tanks containing substrate is a great insurance in having fishes with a very low pathogenic exposition.