Aussie LFS crisis

[ozyreefa]

This is just for anyone who may be reading this thread in Australia. A new aquarium chain has started opening up everywhere over here and they simply go by the name of "Aquarium Warehouse". These guys would make petco look like saints, in most of their stores they probably have about 40-60 55 gallon marine tanks, and about 150 freshwater. The marine tanks are an absolute killing field, when their new stock arrives every month or so, they probably have easily 100 fish of mixed species in every tank, one week later you will see 3-5 dead fish on the bottom and 10-20 dying fish. As for anemones, these guys could wipe out local populations on thier own. Out of the three stores within my area, two of them have 2 55 gallon tanks with about 40-50 radianthus and entamacea quadricolor anemones mixed together and to top off the mix a nice big powerhead sitting on the bare tank floor with them all just to keep them company. The other store had the worst anemone holding tank i have ever seen, although this is a much larger tank, say 150-200 gallons, there is at least 150-200 anemones in this tank, the water is so brown that you cannot see the other side of the tank that is only 3 feet away. Every single store sells every anemone for $35 Australian(I think thats about $30 US) regardless of size, species or condition. Thier fish are also ridiculously cheap, flame angels, coral beauty's, all clown varieties, 5 or 6 butterfly varieties, bi colours, wrasses, and even trigger fish for prices like $10 and $15. It makes me wonder how they aquire thier livestock to be able to sell them at such cheap prices. They do have a tank with some soft corals as well as sps/lps but because thier conditions are so horrific the polyps are almost never open and receding skeleton is a common sight. They probably sell about 20-30% of their fish livestock and the rest die, as for their anemone and corals, about 95% end up dying in the store. I dont know how these guys continue to run with such big losses but they do sell alot of fish tanks too. I guess this is where they make thier money. The people they have working for them know absolutely nothing about maintaing marine aquariums, selcting proper tank mates, advising on correct products to buy ect. They are also starting to put all the other small independant LFS out of business, since they simply cannot compete with thier prices, on average "Aquarium Warehouse" sells 95% of thier live stock for about 1/3 of the price of other aquariums. Anyone seen anything similar? Over the weekend i am going to take some good pics on my 5megapixel camera phone and post them on here so you can see first hand the condition of thier tanks. Anyone intersted to see some?