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CoralDemon

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Hey all,
I just want to give anybody a head's up if you buy any coral's from a wholesaler on 104th St in LA. This wholesaler pretty much only sells coral's and LR and some fish. If you are familiar with 104th St wholesalers, you know who this is.
The last few weeks I have noticed alot of problem's with some coral I purchased at this place and some customer's have been reporting the same. A lot of RTN events on acro's and even bacterial infections on Solomon zo's. I have lost about 1/2 of what I purchased from them over the last few weeks.
Well this week I tested some of the water from the bag which I purchased some coral form this wholesaler and all I can say is ...OH MY GOD!!! Do they even test their water?
I will not get into details, but it is bad!!
I don't know if they have anybody doing anything about it because when I brought it up to one of there employers, then seemed like they did not care. But I think if more people complain or an employee of this wholesaler reads this post, then they may do something about it.

Has anybody else have problems with losses?

Thank's for listening
:evil:
 

CoralDemon

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I just want to make one thing clear, I do not mean to bash this wholesaler, I think they are the best out there as far as coral's and zo's go, I just want them(and buyer's) to be aware.
And Nanocat,as far as not going into detail's as far a parameters go, I'll just say its time for a HUGE water change, and maybe a lil KH adjustment and a dab of Calcium. :)
 

Caterham

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I don't know which wholesaler you are talking about and I don't care. Please tell me, however, that you are NOT evaluating water parameters by testing water that specimens were shipped in. By the time the water gets to you it is quite different, as I am sure you are aware.

If you would like to be critical of the water parameters at ANY wholesale facility please visit them and test them on site. I am certain they would be happy to oblige.
 

CoralDemon

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I run an aquarium maintenance company in Los Angeles, I just happen to run a test no longer than 10 minutes(client lives a couple of minutes for the wholesaler's, if you know with the Los Angeles area, they live in Playa Del Rey ) from the time the item was bagged. I really doubt 10 minutes from packing make's a big difference in parameters, and I did it on multiple bag's, and they all came out the same.
 

CoralDemon

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JT,let me rephrase that, what used to be YOU guy's. I here you work for Mark @ Fishheads now. Sorry, I thought you still worked for Eric.
 

JT

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Umm, Demon. My problem isn't with the wholesaler actually. Sounds to me like you didn't do a very good job at cherry picking to me. Sorry to be so blunt and honest here, but to complain about RTN and bacterial infections on species that are common, and always suspect, to these kinds of problems is silly.

This thread is pointless and a waste of time.
 

naesco

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Thank you for drawing to our attention the poor operating standards of the wholesaler in question. Is there a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals that should be informed of this.

Hopefully someone will let the owner know (even on the QT) and he will kick ass to see that things change.

The comments to this thread are unprofessional and you all need to be reminded that you are dealing with God's creatures.
 

Fish_dave

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I was not going to weigh in on this thread mainly because it seemed that using a water sample that had been used to transport an animal would give suspect results and I am pretty confident of our water quality. I changed my mind because it seems to have gotten a little out of hand especially with Wayne taking any negative comment as truth.

I see two large problems with what was stated. The first is that the sample was used to transport an animal before being tested, I think that this has given a poor reading. The second is that the deaths occured over a two week period, not right after being taken from supposedly poor water. We have several tanks full of weeks and months old acropora and zooanthids that are healthy and doing fine although they are brown and not very sellable. I would expect that poor water quality would affect the oldest animals in the system. Most of our losses and the zooanthids with fungus occur shortly after the stress of shipping, usually within a couple of days not a couple of weeks.

Our water testing this evening straight from the coral system gave us the following results:
Salinity 1.021 A little low but the guys did just add fresh water for top up.
Nitrate Around 2.5 ppm. I thought it under 2.5 ppm but another employee thought that it was between 2.5 and 5ppm.
Ph 8.3 Right between the 8.2 and 8.4 range. We add powdered coral skeletons to the system water weekly, several pounds a week.
Alkalinity was a touch low but not by much. Nothing that alarmed us.

We change 5,000 to 6,000 gallons of water weekly with what we use for packing, system cleaning, and drained to waste from incoming shipment acclimations etc. This is in a system of somewhere around 15,000 to 18,000 gallons. That amount (5,000 to 6,000 gallons) is added weekly as fresh sea water. We feel that is a sufficient water change.

From this post I did find that the salinity is a bit lower than I would like. I tell the guys to never trust the pointer / floater type hydrometers but they still like the ease of using one. The one they are using is off because when I checked with the refractometer we were low and they thought that it was right on. They will be bringing it up to 1.023 over the next week.

We do worry about water quality and try to insure that it is good. With tens of thousands of dollars of animals in the systems at any one time the quality of our water is important to us.

I hope that this helps clear up any thoughts that we are not concerned with water quality.

Dave
 

naesco

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It is nice to see an owner reply in a professionl manner.
Maybe this thread might promt all owners of wholesale and lfs to do the next test themselves. (kind of an audit eh)
 
A

Anonymous

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In the future, if you have an issue with the quality you recieve from a wholesaler, the ideal solution would be to let them know and rectify it privately first. Mistakes happen and they deserve the opportunity to make it up to you before getting dragged through the mud over something that is probably a rare occurence. No wholesaler could stay in business if they consistentlt sent out diseased animals in poor quality water.

Dragging it out into the public before contacting them about it was not the best way to fix the situation.
 
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