Deanos:
At least 90% of the fish we keep in are tanks allow cleaner shrimp to clean them. Every reef "guru" I have ever met recommended cleaner shrimp. I used to have the problem of fish dying within a week or two because of ich (All fish carry it and it is in MOST of our systems, kind of like a cold- fish become susceptible to it when stressed)
When I added cleaner shrimp to my tank I stopped losing fish. They would come down with ich, but would recover. Every single person I have made this recommendation to has had the same exact results, once they added cleaner shrimp their fish would survive ich, without them they would not.
As for a store, one of my first jobs out of High School was for a pet shop. It is not as easy as you would think. Going through the points made above:
1. Get the right setup - The "right" setup is very expensive and most new stores could not afford to do it "right". Second, the right setup for your aquarium at home is not necessarily the right one for a store. Stores do a considerable amount of volume and every system is basically considered a quarantine tank.
2. Take care of your livestock - I agree. As long as the setup is adequate the only real concern in taking care of livestock is proper aclimation and maintenance.
3. Set your prices cheap - This is very tricky. If prices are too cheap stores lose money and go out of business. Besides VERY high rents for a store front in the tri-state area (Minimum of $4,000 per month) it is inevitable that stuff dies on arrival, while in a dealers tank and during transport. A very conservative estimate is that 25% of livestock will not make it. Not to mention stuff that does not do very well and has to be marked down below cost. (A coral that loses half of it's polyps, etc.)
Remember, most fish for stores spend less than a week in any one place. Usually they arrive at LA after spending as much as 48-72 hours in transit and at customs in tiny little bags with barely enough water to cover them, they are repacked with fresh water right away or put in holding tanks overnight and repacked the next morning (Holding tanks usually have less than ideal parameters), shipped to the wholeseller the next day or a day later at most for 99% of the livestock and once at the wholeseller they are put in other holding tanks where most of the inventory sells within a day or two and at most a week. Once the store owner buys it it is then REACCLIMATED in their store and sold anywhere from the same day to two weeks later.
The animals you buy have been put through SERIOUS stress. They have been caught, held in buckets for hours, bagged in less than ideal conditions, and have had their water changed a minimum of 5 times with less than ideal quality water each time. It is a miracle that they survive at all.
-Alfred