I think I met a "fish guru"

[kdlbem]

Okay, this is gonna sound crazy, but yesterday I went to a LFS my mom told me about, about an hour away from where we live. My girlfriend and I got there, we were scared. This is a dilapidated house, very overgrown, I thought, "man, we just wasted a couple hours in the car". So we wade through everything and get to the door to the store (garage), And the inside looked worse. I was about to turn and run, when my girlfriend stopped me, and pointed to one of the salt encrusted tanks. I wiped away some of the crust, and underneath was one of the healthiest reef tanks I've ever seen. So I look some more, and all his tanks and fish are healthy(not a sick fish in the place). Then I looked at the prices on some of his equipment, And it is half of anywhere(internet, LFS, etc). Then his customers start talking to us, telling us " don't pay any attention to the way the place looks, this guy has been here 40 years, and he's the best". Then another told us about her being out of town, and her fish got sick, so this guy goes over there at 10 at night, and bags up all her fish, and takes them to his place and QT's all her fish till they're all better. For FREE. Anyway I talked to the guy(crazy looking old prospector type guy) for a while, asking each other questions, and he seems to know his s*%t, so I start looking at fish and LR, (cause this guy's BUSY) and I found a nice piece of rock for twenty bucks(LFS would have charged 60) and a VERY healthy juv. Blue-girdled angel for 70(lfs would have wanted double that). I had to swear to the guy that my water was good ( he wanted to test it first), and if it wasn't I wouldn't be wasting 70 bucks on a fish. So he sold it to me, but said to come back with some water, in a day or two so he could test it with his electronic tester, and mix me up some stuff if my water is out of whack( asked his cutomers, and they bring him a water sample, he tests it, If any thing's off, he'll mix up some of his chem., and next test it's always fine). Pretty crazy place, but it saved me over a hundred bucks. He also was saying bio balls are garbage, and I should slowly replace them with lava rock, it seems to makes sense. Anyone ever heard of this? So many healthy tanks can't be wrong, right? What a long, strange trip it was! Just thought you guys would get a kick out of this,
B

 

[krazzydart]

cool I think he has a brother up here near green bay wisconsin.... (his name is jeff) he knows his stuff too!!! it is great that you found someone to help you with your tanks.....

 

[beth]

Well, the turth is, that 50% of the $$ charged at LFS is probably in overhead [price of rent for store, ac, employees, ins., etc.] So, if you can run a place out of your garage, then you can cut expenses, not to mention how convenient it would be to be right at home and at work at the same time.

 

[justafem]

KDLBEM,
what part of oregon are you located? im in redding bout hour and a half from the oregon border, wondering if the LFS is worth checking into

 

[kdlbem]

We're in Eugene. Aren't you closer to Sacramento? Seems like they would have more LFS's than you could shake a stick at. I would check there if it's closer. As far as driving up here(it's 40 min. north of us), I would call him and speak directly to him, and see what you think. He is a bit set in his ways(still firmly belives in ugf and a couple things I wouldn't do in my own tanks), but the prices are insanely low, and his tanks are all very healthy(he uses hot canisters wiht the ugf's & no copper.... ever) We went back yesterday, and bought at least 100 dollars worth of live rock(nice, lots of coraline every where)for 40 bucks. We were asking him about the reef tank we're going to set up in the near future, he showed me a nice 48 inch 220 watt pc unit with four bulbs, and it was only 250 dollars Guess where we're getting ours. He sells tanks for a dollar a gallon. He also will try to talk you into his "less is better" theory every time. He was trying to talk me into using dual NO flourecents, but I politely told him I was set on sticking to the watts per gallon rule, so he gave up on it and showed me the PC unit. The funny thing is he does this on some of his and the tanks look great. He gets his shipments on tues. evening, and most of the stuff is gone by wed. If you don't mind the scary appearance of the place (it's definately NOT *****), he has some great prices. I think if you specified what you wanted to him and he was waiting for you to pick it up, and you were buying quite a bit, it could be worth it. If you want his number, E-mail us at KDLBEM@aol.com. If you decide to come up, stop and say hi, we'll probably go up too HTH,
B
[ April 29, 2001: Message edited by: KDLBEM ]
[ April 29, 2001: Message edited by: KDLBEM ]

 

[justafem]

sac is about 2 1/2 hours drive, and the LFS ive seen there dont seem to be the greatest, and the prices are outragious! im trying to figure out how far eugene is, im planning on taking a trip to medford in a couple of weeks and was wondering if it would be worth my time to go further north

 

[kdlbem]

Eugene is 3 hours from Medford, then 45 minutes more to the......(I use this term loosely.....)store. He must really love what he does, he even puts out a newletter to his customers. Like I said, I dont agree with some of the things he does, but one can't argue with success, and he's been there for 40 years. I really would call and speak to him first, just so you can tell him what you might be looking for
B