Just thought that I'd share this

[stacyt]

Today I took a trip down to los angels. We went to visit a couple of importers to hand pick some corals and such. I was shocked at the treatment of the fish. Now I know why fish are so stressed upon arrival. 1st when they receive the fish they put them into little containers, barely big enough to hold the fish. There is no acclimation proccess on most of the fish. Just straight out of the bag into holding containers. For larger fish they throw several of them into 55 gallon tanks. If they are fish that will fight with eachother they put them into containers, again just big enough for the fish. Most of the filtration is on one system. I can see how easily ich can spread in this type of setup. The only things that get fed are fish that eat meaty foods, and they don't get much at all. It was really unerving to see this hole process to say the least. Also all of the fish water is constantly treated with copper. I got into a little debate with the manager about the effectiveness of treating with copper only for a couple of days. He tried to tell me that all of the fish leave there healthy and ich free because they are treated with copper. This makes me think hard about quaranting new arrivals now. I think the hole attempt that they have is to make the fish appear to be healthy just by removing any physical signs of disease for a week or so. Most of the fish are moved out within 24-48 hrs. upon arrival. It was also upsetting to see some of the beautifull specimans, in such large quantaties, that stand little to no chance of survival.
I will give them credit on their corals, as they where trying to sell more aquacultured specimans. Picked out about $500 worth of nice corals, and inverts.

 

[beth]

Good that you posted this first hand observation. As you said, now it is easy to understand why fish have ich. Makes you wonder if we should be in this hobby, eh?

 

[barracuda]

Unfortunately this is the reality. I saw the same things here in Israel. The only animals that get better attention are corals. Probably just because they too sensitive and if they were treated like fish thay just could die.

 

[stacyt]

Now I really understand why the fish come in so stressed. I'm really suprised that none of the animal rights groups have jumped on this, especially since there has been a lot of attention lately on the destruction of the reefs, and it's inhabitants. And yes it does make me wonder about being in the hobby. One of the things my freind had told me before going down is that he had quite buying fish from these particular importers because the mortality rate on the fish where so high. Next week we're going to take a trip to some others in the bay area to check out their methods. The fish that he's been getting from these vendors have had a much better survival rate.