I Work At A Chain That Sells Fish, And Would Like Advice

[aaronus]

Hey guys, I'm looking for advice.

I recently got a job at a chain store in the United States, and it turns out I get to be one of the few employees selling (aka netting) tropical fish to customers. This store has about a bunch of ten gallon tanks all connected to one filter, and then another set for cold water, meaning that if one group of fish gets a disease, all the other tropicals or goldfish are exposed to it. Unfortunately there are usually sick fish. Ick, fin rot, fungus and overcrowding are common problems. Also, I find myself in a position to give customers advice about fish keeping, which I do to the best of my knowledge.

I spent one week successfully treating the whole tropical section for ick. But a bunch of paradise fish died off from some other disease--seemed to be a fungus, I thought...guppies and neons kept dying for no obvious external reason, and then the next week's shipment brought on ick again. I was told only to treat one disease at a time, but I'm confused...it seems like I could be constantly treating just the ick, but I don't think the fish ought to be getting sick so easily.

We have plecos that die also. I am wondering if we need to feed them something besides flakes...like algae tablets? And yes, we do have a sign that says they grow up to 12", so at least people get the idea.

I desire to give the best help I can to customers and improve the store's (especially the fish's) situation. I have around ten years of experience with small 10-29 gallon community tanks, with fish such as you can see in my signature, but taking care of hundreds is much more challenging, considering I'm only an employee and can't make executive decisions on my own. Any ideas, suggestions, clarifying questions, etc, would be appreciated. Thank you!

 

[saz326]

Hi aaronus. Sounds like you have a few good questions and a darn good heart to go with it.

fish that are carrying disease should never be sold as I am sure you are aware. Any fish that display symptoms of ilness should be quaranteened away from other stock, and either "fixed" or humanely destroyed. I understand that shops accept losses as part of their daily running costs, so they would far prefer to kill of 10 fish, than loose entire stocks to disease.

Perhaps you could remind your boss that if a sick fish is sold, and kills off the customers other fish - then the shop is liable to pay expenses. And some fish are very expensive to replace! Maybe this could convince the manager that you need a quaranteen area!

You should also quaranteen any new arrivals to prevent them bringing new diseases in. This is especially important when all fish end up living in the same water.

Tanks that have been treated for ich and nearly recovered will cause ich to happen on new fish if they are introduced to the same water. Remember new fish will have been stressed in their journey, and so will be liable to catch any disease in the aquarium water.

The best thing you could do in my opinion is ensure that sick fish and new fish are quaranteened. So individual tanks for each disease, and individual pump/filter systems for each tank. Use these tanks as hospital tanks, and as new arrival quaranteen tanks. If you cant add new tanks to the system then block off the water outlets/inlets on the current tanks and fit with an internal filter until the new fish have been quaranteened for 10 days, then re-open the inlets/outlets.

Variety in food is vital. Plecs eat mainly from the bottom of the tank. They will not go to the surface to eat flake foods. They may well be starving to death. sorry..
Pellets, wafers, even cucumber. (think it is called zukini in the states "spelling may be wrong!")

Good luck.

xx

 

[joecoral]

Hi aaronus

Have you tested the water in your systems, as continually getting one disease after another (ich, fungus etc etc) is generally indicative there may be an underlying problem with the water
As for plecs, flake food is no good, you need to provide either algae tablets or cucumber/raw potato/courgette (which is zucchini in america, not cucumber). Make sure to remove any uneated cucumber/potato etc after 24 hours or so.

Perhaps you could remind your boss that if a sick fish is sold, and kills off the customers other fish - then the shop is liable to pay expenses.

Not true, if the shop sells a fish which dies as a result of the fish been sold in less than proper health, then yes, the shop is liable to replace the dead fish, but existing stock hold no claim, as you have no way to ascertain the condition the fish were already in.

Do the systems have any kind of UV sterilization to try and reduce parasite infections? Can the individual tanks be isolated to prevent the spread of disease throughout the whole system?

 

[andywg]

Any fish that display symptoms of ilness should be quaranteened away from other stock, and either "fixed" or humanely destroyed. I understand that shops accept losses as part of their daily running costs, so they would far prefer to kill of 10 fish, than loose entire stocks to disease.

Except in many cases (such as Ich) it infests the tank/system, not the fish. Quarantine after detection is pointless and just creates a false belief that the situation has been controlled.

Perhaps you could remind your boss that if a sick fish is sold, and kills off the customers other fish - then the shop is liable to pay expenses. And some fish are very expensive to replace! Maybe this could convince the manager that you need a quaranteen area!

And could you guide me to the relevant law on this? My understanding is that much of (UK at least) purchase law relies on caveat emptor or "buyer beware" meaning that it is your look out for not checking that the fish was healthy before buying.

You should also quaranteen any new arrivals to prevent them bringing new diseases in. This is especially important when all fish end up living in the same water.

This is very true, and to be sure you must be looking at minimum quarantine of 2 weeks and 4 weeks being preferable.

 

[saz326]

Thank you andywg

Any fish that display symptoms of ilness should be quaranteened away from other stock, and either "fixed" or humanely destroyed. I understand that shops accept losses as part of their daily running costs, so they would far prefer to kill of 10 fish, than loose entire stocks to disease.

Except in many cases (such as Ich) it infests the tank/system, not the fish. Quarantine after detection is pointless and just creates a false belief that the situation has been controlled.

Perhaps you could remind your boss that if a sick fish is sold, and kills off the customers other fish - then the shop is liable to pay expenses. And some fish are very expensive to replace! Maybe this could convince the manager that you need a quaranteen area!

And could you guide me to the relevant law on this? My understanding is that much of (UK at least) purchase law relies on caveat emptor or "buyer beware" meaning that it is your look out for not checking that the fish was healthy before buying.

True - forgot about the whole parasite thing there - my apologies. Guess should have said this is for fungal infections and bacterial infections. Although there may be paraistes that dont drop off like ich does. Lifecycle is important here. My apologies for not being thorough.

Not basing my "liable to pay expenses" bit on any laws im afraid. I am aware of hearing about shops that have paid expenses when stock have been lost, or given their customer store credit - to be honest, the comment was added to try to enforce a bit of worry into Aaronus' manager. If he could tell his manager that they may be liable - then maybe - just maybe they will do something to prevent the problem from occurring. I didnt mean it to be a legal and binding statement.........Although i wish it would be!

Thanks for making me straighten things out.

 

[rabbut]

Get UV ruunning on the system and that stops things spreading tank-to-tank Get a few internal filters running in your sump(s) and flow control valves fitted to all your inlet pipefeeds so you can isolate tanks (close the valve and water stops going in, so the tank will drain down to just below the overflow hole and stop) and treat individual diseases as and when needed in seporate tanks Finaly, many shops will background dose copper to reduce the rater of infection.

HTH
Rabbut

 

[joecoral]

Get UV ruunning on the system and that stops things spreading tank-to-tank Get a few internal filters running in your sump(s) and flow control valves fitted to all your inlet pipefeeds so you can isolate tanks (close the valve and water stops going in, so the tank will drain down to just below the overflow hole and stop) and treat individual diseases as and when needed in seporate tanks

Thats exactly what I said!

 

[rabbut]

Get UV ruunning on the system and that stops things spreading tank-to-tank Get a few internal filters running in your sump(s) and flow control valves fitted to all your inlet pipefeeds so you can isolate tanks (close the valve and water stops going in, so the tank will drain down to just below the overflow hole and stop) and treat individual diseases as and when needed in seporate tanks

Thats exactly what I said!

Aye, but it went ignored, so I thought I'd repeate

 

[Truck]

Finaly, many shops will background dose copper to reduce the rater of infection.

this is a good idea, but not if stock such as shrimps are present

 

[Honeythorn]

Just tell your bosses that the shipments are bringing in sick fish. You need to quarantine them to treat these diseases, and need tanks for that.This way, your current stock will be far less likely to catch anything, they will as a result be healthier, and healthy fish sell FAR better than sick fish.

Tell them, you are experienced and keep fish yourself at home ( which is presumably a contributing factor to you getting the job ? ) , so at some points you also have to purchase stock for your tank, so you can see the situation from both sides of the fence . When YOU go into a store to buy fish, YOU do not buy sick or dying specimens. Why would you spend money on a sick fish that can infect the rest of your tank? You don't do it, others who are interested in fishkeeping are also unlikely to do so if they want a healthy tank.

Basically if the store wants to make a profit from selling these fish, then they need to be healthy so people will want to buy them in the first place. You need quarantine tanks to isolate new arrivals ( who are known and proven to be bringing in these diseases ) and eliminate any problems BEFORE the fish are put into the public tanks to be sold. Sick fish don't sell. No sale means no profit.

 

[aaronus]

I have tested the water and found it to be good. It has safe levels of all the common things like ammonia, nitrite, pH, and hardness.
The tanks do not have a UV system. Actually, this topic is the first place I've heard of them.
I haven't had a good look at the back of the tank system to see how all the water flows to and from tanks, but I understand it goes to the top tanks and then down to those below. I'd like to check it out, but I think it would be pretty hard to keep the filter on and manage to isolate certain tanks, at this time. Maybe installing valves is feasible.

We receive fish every week, and we get a lot of them. So we'd need to designate at least a third of our tanks for quarantine. In each tank right now we have one to three types of fish. In order to make room I'd have to combine the occupants of various tanks. Having quarantine tanks would give me two tanks for neons and platties combined with...glowlights, two tanks for guppies combined with...mollies, two tanks for blue gouramis maybe combined with gold gouramis, two tanks for tinfoils, pictus cats, and giant danios (each a normal and a quarantine)...

Unforunately they didn't ask me whether I had aquarium experience before hiring me for this job.

 

[Syphoniera]

Just tell your bosses that the shipments are bringing in sick fish. You need to quarantine them to treat these diseases, and need tanks for that.This way, your current stock will be far less likely to catch anything, they will as a result be healthier, and healthy fish sell FAR better than sick fish.

Tell them, you are experienced and keep fish yourself at home ( which is presumably a contributing factor to you getting the job ? ) , so at some points you also have to purchase stock for your tank, so you can see the situation from both sides of the fence . When YOU go into a store to buy fish, YOU do not buy sick or dying specimens. Why would you spend money on a sick fish that can infect the rest of your tank? You don't do it, others who are interested in fishkeeping are also unlikely to do so if they want a healthy tank.

Basically if the store wants to make a profit from selling these fish, then they need to be healthy so people will want to buy them in the first place. You need quarantine tanks to isolate new arrivals ( who are known and proven to be bringing in these diseases ) and eliminate any problems BEFORE the fish are put into the public tanks to be sold. Sick fish don't sell. No sale means no profit.

You go, girl!!!
What she said!

aaronus, you've been stuck in a very tricky situation, but between the farming/shipping of sick fish and the stresses of shipping, once-rare or unheard of problems are now horrendously common.
I've read that many wide-spread problems can be traced to one or another large-scale international supplier...
While the prices may be better, the sometimes extensive fish loss and the accumulating discouragement of customers must ultimately reduce this savings considerably.
You can't make executive decisions, and as a new employee may not have much opportunity for input.
But perhaps something could be worked out whereby more healthy fish were purchased from smaller local breeders for immediate sale, and incoming farmed fish - likely with multiple ailments - Q-ed separately?
This would also have the advantage of making the shop known among experienced fish fanciers voted most likely to purchase fish and make recommendations, and of somewhat boosting the local economy, not to mention generally helping in saving fuel and reducing pollution, along with bereaved new owner heartbreak and piscine suffering in global transit.
'Cheap' sick fish - and those exposed to their ills - cost a fortune in meds, time, effort, stress, emotional pain - as chronically broke as I am, now that I've found two privately run places with admittedly more expensive but valued fish, I'll buy there from here on in.
And I wish I'd done so all along.

Unfortunately, of course, chains tend to have contracts with suppliers made for them by CEOs most concerned with paper profits...

 

[jourdy288]

All the above are pretty good, covered everything I would have said and more.
Does your LFS have any sort of return policy? It might be goodd if you help enforce it

 

[aaronus]

The return policy is something like: If your fish dies within two days, bring back the receipt for a refund.

 

[hellohefalump]

at the shop I worked at the whole system was connected to one big filter (sump) like yours. We had a UV steraliser running on it, which did the trick.