Lfs Fish Size Guide

[three-fingers]

Would you guys purchase reptiles blind? Why expect lfs's to be run by ichthyologists with signs more informative than museums/aquariums?

Exactly. For a small business LFS, making accurate labels for every single species of fish isnt an easy task to keep on top of, especially with new fish coming in once or twice a week and with fish being moved from tank to tank. Seriously, it's just not feasible, there's water changes to do and customers to serve!

A good LFS will have staff that let you know about the fish when you are buying them.

i would purchase a blind fish, fish being blind wont affect their lives at all...they swim away from predators by using the lateral line to detect pressure changes, they can smell for food and sense it in the water with the lateral line again...they maintain their boyancy with the swimbladder, so a blind fish is no skin of my nose.

Think you missed the point .

 

[Truck]

Think you missed the point .

if you were here earlier you would have seen a post on the topic of blind fish, it has now been edited for some reason

 

[VespertineStar]

Meguro: Fishkeeping is a good deal more in depth than most other hobbies because of the sheer number of different combinations on offer and the ease of which you can just point to two completely unsuitable species and buy them, usually for very little money when even a rudimentary schooling in fish care will give staff enough information to make decisions for the better.

Plus museums are caring for the creatures in question and they are more often than not very well schooled in their field. Giving the customer just a few lines of information can mean the difference between a fish living a long happy life for it's given lifespan, or dying slowly from ammonia poisoning or disease due to a poor split second decision at the LFS.

*edit: three-fingers: I know there are a lot of species but it would amount to ten mins extra work per day to move a label from one tank to another. They could be magnetic backed and perhaps a standard size/format so that suppliers can send them out to retailers?

 

[meguro]

So if a snake was labeled as a "carpet python" but was in fact a taipan, you'd purchase it anyway?

 

[VespertineStar]

So if a snake was labeled as a "carpet python" but was in fact a taipan, you'd purchase it anyway?

I'm afraid I don't know a whole lot about snakes and never paid much attention to them on sale in local stores. If I did know about such things though I would do what I do with fish; if I know it's mislabelled and I want to buy it I probably will and then politely bring it to the attention of a staff member.

 

[three-fingers]

*edit: three-fingers: I know there are a lot of species but it would amount to ten mins extra work per day to move a label from one tank to another. They could be magnetic backed and perhaps a standard size/format so that suppliers can send them out to retailers?

That's an extra 10mins that aren't there, and if they were, would be much better used doing water changes/scrubbing tanks/cleaning filters/pricing stock. Not to mention the time/money that would be spent organising it in the first place.

Some systems do exist that are similar to that, but in real life, they aren't practical or accurate all the time.

People hardly ever read or pay attention to them anyway, putting detailed labels up would result in more suffering fish in lots of situations. Hell, loads of customers just ignore advice given by staff. Labels would just make decent staff ask less questions.

I agree labelling up all the fish and having info would be nice, but it's by no means a solution and shouldn't be necessary in the first place.

 

[meguro]

My point was, you wouldn't go bouncing off the walls purchasing snakes, so why expect people buying fish have zero consequence?

Also, this:

shouldn't be necessary in the first place.

 

[VespertineStar]

I wholeheartedly agree that this sort of system shouldn't be necessary in the first place and I'm not really on about smaller stores staffed by people who can answer customers' questions but stores who employ people who just want a job and give out bad advice or have 1 staff member to every 5 customers asking questions. If there were a standard labelling system for fishes (along the lines of nutritional information on food) that people could refer to in the shop it might make staffing P@h and the like much easier. I mean if you were reading something on the side of food packaging that said it was 200 calories for instance you can pretty much guarantee that it is at least halfway accurate information but if you walk into a fish shop and happen across a scrawled label that says something like "assorted fish x" you don't know if that is accurate or not. three-fingers: you say people don't pay attention to labels but in most of the places I go the information isn't even there to be ignored.

People should be able to make a halfway informed decision about what they are buying without having to ask a staff member "is this fish x or fish y." Not everyone has the time to trawl the net or read through books like we do on here, exhaustively researching compatibility and feeding habits etc.

 

[chr15_8]

If the shops had labels about fish it should save staff time answering the same questions over and over again.

In the long run it sould save time. When i said labels i meant the more common types of fish like tetras, guppies,etc. Obviosly rarer fish and not so common fish. Probably not worth it but again it should save time from people asking the same questions.

 

[meguro]

Not everyone has the time to trawl the net or read through books like we do on here, exhaustively researching compatibility and feeding habits etc.

If they're not going to learn how to properly care for an animal, I don't think they should be trying to keep one.

 

[VespertineStar]

That's the thing though, it has put a lot of people I know off starting to keep fish when they see how much time I put into finding info about fish. I don't mind, it's half the fun and I like learning about fish but I do consider this my hobby. Considering how popular fish tanks are and how easy it is to get a hold of them providing some basic information might help stop a lot of people ending up on forums with a lot of dead fish which not only puts them off the hobby in general but also winds up with a group of fish that might have lived for the sake of a pamphlet of information giving a basic overview of fishless cycling, some basic pointers about feeding plecs i.e. don't just assume they will live forever feeding off algae on the sides of the tank, and what sort of fish prefer hiding places rather than air powered oysters as ornaments etc.

Also, have you seen the amount of conflicting information about fish on websites? Not everyone who searches for info about a fish will end up somewhere that's handing out good advice. I've seen some shocking info given out on some sites.