Re: NANFA-- Was: pet store forays Now: LFS Troubles in Baton

Moontanman-in-aol.com
Mon, 3 May 2004 20:50:40 EDT

In a message dated 5/3/04 5:02:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time, tyhall-in-mia.net
writes:

> BG, believe it or not, most all of the Big Boxers and the local LFS's get
> most of
> their fish from the same distributors. The big difference comes in care
> after
> delivery. I babysit my tanks. I care for them all day, everyday. They are
> mine and
> are a direct reflection of my store. In a big boxer you simply don't get
> that
> level of dedication. The employees, even the good ones, are not going to
put
> that
> level of care into someone else's property.
>
> What you are seeing is endemic to the entire nation. Local shops are
> disappearing
> and being replaced by large national chains. While these are great and
fill
> a
> niche, they should not replace those local establishments that make each
> city and
> town unique. I tell people all the time, support your local merchants.
> Wether they
> are Pet Stores or Hardware Stores. If you do not exercise your right to
shop
> in
> these local establishments, they will soon disappear and you will have no
> choice
> but to go to Walmart, or some other national chain.
>
What you say is true, there used to be several pet shops in my area. Some
were better than others. Usually each had a specialty they were really good-in-
but now we have three chain type stores, one dog and cat store, and one
privately owned store that specializes in marine fish. the marine fish guy is really
good-in-what he does but that's all he does. I have to admit that one of the
chain stores does a pretty good job with their fish but it's because of one
individual employee that works her tail off making sure the fish are kept the way
they should be. Even then she is stymied from having a really great selection
due to the owners of the chain stores not wanting to stock anything but the
basic bread and butter type fish. She sneaks in some of my fish that I breed
from time to time but it's difficult due to the owners wanting to simplify the
whole fish thing down to as few fish as possible. One shop actually has ten
aquariums (new shop, chain type) I asked the owner when they were going to expand
their fish selection. All I got was a blank stare and the question "what other
fish would you want?" Five of their tanks have goldfish in them. Will we ever
see the fish stores of the past with a huge selection that made every trip to
the store an adventure? I can remember spending hours looking-in-the tanks
trying to decide where to spend my money. Now I have to ask for something as
basic as Cardinals and then only to be told they don't stock them because they
can't be kept in an aquarium with other fish or some such asinine reason. It's
really sickening, I miss my Saturday petshop day when I would spend the whole
day shopping for fish. Now my town is four times as big but the fish selection
is so small I could come close to having every species of fish in just two or
three community type aquariums (small tanks-in-that!) or when they do have
something unusual it is some kind of giant killer fish that couldn't live in a
small lake without out growing it. It just doesn't make sense to me!

Moon
If you listen to fools, the mob rules!
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
/"Unless stated otherwise, comments made on this list do not necessarily
/ reflect the beliefs or goals of the North American Native Fishes
/ Association"
/ This is the discussion list of the North American Native Fishes Association
/ nanfa-in-aquaria.net. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or get help, send the word
/ subscribe, unsubscribe, or help in the body (not subject) of an email to
/ nanfa-request-in-aquaria.net. For a digest version, send the command to
/ nanfa-digest-request-in-aquaria.net instead.
/ For more information about NANFA, visit our web page, http://www.nanfa.org