Great Sig! Im nervous now to whether you'll be coming into me
lol
Cant wait to hear about the LFS's tomorow
Hes going around local lfs's
If you look in his name he lives in Yorkshire ^^
So to travel to essex isnt local.
I'm closer to him that you
For the record, I have managed to convert an LFS by going there all the time and sharing what I've learned online. I was a clueless noob when I first went there. I had a brand new 5 gallon tank and on their advice I put a bristlenose and nine platies in it. Fortunately I discovered the enormity of my mistake before I killed any of them - I still can't believe they all made it through the two months I had them in that tank.
It's the only LFS in my town (living in the country as I do) so I couldn't exactly wander around randomly into different shops until I found a source of good advice. I did succeed in the end, on here. But I went in and found out exactly what they know about cycling. They do use bacteria in the bottle - only one brand of it, and I know from experience that it actually works. But I told them everything I've seen on the net from the truly ridiculous (suggestions that if I put every fish I have in a 20 gal into my uncle's empty 300 gal, it would still be overstocked) to the accurate (fishless cycling is a more reliable and humane method of maturing a filter). They are seriously interested in the fishless method. While they don't recommend it to customers (because they've never seen it done and can't get ammonia to try it, and wouldnt' know what the internet was unless it sprouted fins - no offence Colin!) they want to know more. They listen to everything I tell them, probably largely because i don't blame them for the bad advice they gave me like a lot of people would have. It's kind of hard to explain, but you have to give people a chance. It's a lot easy to tell a friend that you think you might have a better idea than to reason with somebody who just don't wanna listen - been there, done that.
Being 14 doesn't help because they invariably think I'm an ignorant fool. I have had to march out of a shop with a rescued betta, walk into a department store, buy water treatment and fill the bag to a reasonable level in a public toilet because I could NOT convince them to put more water in the bag than was required to keep the betta damp! I'm not kidding, there would have been less than 100mL of water in the bag. He died a few weeks later of columnaris, I could not shift it. They've also tried to convince me that it's perfectly fine to pinch and prod bettas to make them move and that lethargic, slimy bettas with finrot are perfectly healthy. Oh, and by the way, you can keep males and females - TOGETHER - in the general community tank, with a few oscars. And they Can't Tell The Difference Between A PK Male and A Female. That is SO annoying because they won't listen when i try to explain it!
Excuse soapboxing. But yeah, I think this is a great idea. At least somebody has the balls to do it (because I wouldn't)
Tell you guys what... if I set out an attractively desgined article on why and how to fishless cycle, suitable for distribution (like as a flyer) would people spread it around on the Internet so people can print it and show LFS? If this gets out so people have at least heard of it we might get somewhere.
I'd be more than happy to send the artical around, Even though i primarily use fishless cycles for setting up quick tanks.
my beautiful tanks are Fishless Cycled. So i think it'd be better for society to at least learn about it, even if they decide to look the otherway.
I'm apologise for you're loss as a begginer, it happens to all of us.
I personally was about 13 and was new to keeping more than a few goldfish and a basic trop system.
When a maidenheads sold me: 2 Oscars, 1 frontosa, 3 Gold Severum, 2 blood parrots, 1 Jag and 1 syno eupterus.
For a 4ft tank. Now these fish were all babies, i continually hastled the guy asking if they'd be fine in my tank.
As even at 13 i knew these fish wernt gona stay small forever.
A few months passed before i managed to get on the internet
and learn all about said fish (when i was 13 the internet wasnt really a thing everyone had)
And at which point moved all of my fish on.
Luckily this was before they grew past 3-4 inches.
But LFS's need to learn.
