[MiamiAG]

OK, so I go into my LFS (that will remain nameless) and I begin to look at their plants for sale. I notice something strange in the front row. It looks like someone has taken a C. wendtii and pulled the leaves apart and planted them in a row.

I ask an employee (young kid with messy hair), "what is that?" He replies, "That's a new type of plant from Asia. You float the leaf in your aquarium and it will begin to grow roots. You then plant it and within a few weeks you have a nice big plant. $2.99 each."

Oh God :roll:

 

[HeyPK]

Another funny lfs experience

This happened in Medford, Massachusetts, in the late '60s:

I went into the store and saw these odd looking plants in an aquarium. I recognized them as ground pines (Lycopodium) that grow in the nearby Fellsway park under the pine trees. They, of couse, have no business being underwater and will slowly die there, but I played dumb and asked the clerk,"Those are interesting plants. Where do they come from?" "Oh they come from some river on the Amazon." "Do they grow well in the aquarium?" "Oh, yes. They grow real well."

Let the buyer beware!

 

[panaque]

And as in the last post, many tmes I have gotten misadvised as to what a plant needs. There are alot of plants that dont do well being fully submerged. I had this problem with purple waffle (hemigraphis colorata) a while back.

 

[plantbrain]

My personal favorite is playing dumb and seeing what they say.
"What's your advice on CO2?"

One gal said we shouldn't use it "because it's depleting the ozone layer".

I did ask one LFS if I could use Flourish in place of soy sauce once recently They joke went over their head and they were very concerned I might actually try it!

Oh well, people are funny, I got nailed once when someone asked how were the Keys, and I said "Great, I found them, thanks".

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[Steve Pituch]

Pathetic LFS Stories

I think it was about 20 years ago at a mall LFS in NJ. I actually got real worked up over this. They had their 10 gallon stock tanks staggered. The lowest shelf was the one most forward and about two feet off the ground, perfect for a little kid to experience the tickle of fish when he put his hand in the tank. The tank was open too as they normally are at an LFS. The only problem was that the tank was full of Piranhas. Back when I was younger I didn't have a lot of patience dealing with extreme stupidity. They refused to recognize any problem with where the Piranhas were. I was getting affraid they were going to call security because of the hard time I tried to give them so I finally left.

For this past Christmas my wife wanted a tank of her own so I set up my 7.5 gallon bowfront for her for low light: Anubias, Java Fern and African bolbitus. She wanted more color in the tank so I went to the only local LFS here in Corpus Christi specializing exclusively in tropical fish, so I could surprise her with some "tropicals", something I normally don't buy. I ended up getting her a sunset maculatus platy and a male flame guppy. While I was there I saw a tank of fancy mollies. However, there was one pair that were pure Sailfin mollies. Thinking that someone locally was collecting the Sailfins I asked who the breeder was, as I wanted to meet him. She said that all those fish they get special from Florida. I said "even the Sailfin mollies?". She said "yes". So asked her if she realized that you can catch them in the ditch in back of the store and she said "yeah, everybody dumps their tropical fish in the streams when they get tired of them." I tried to explain to her that Sailfin mollies come from Corpus Christi, and that there are tens of thousands of then in the ditches, but she just didn't get it.

Yesterday I bought out the local Petsmart's entire stock of Flying Foxes. They were really baby SAEs. It happens about once a year. The guy finally asked why I was buying them. By the way they were $1.49 a piece. I told him why they weren't Flying Foxes. I also told him that the last guy who had his job insisted that the Flying Foxes and SAEs were the same fish and he wouldn't net just the SAEs out, so I ended up with some Flying Foxes I didn't want. I then told him I normally don't buy fish because of all the Sailfin mollies in the ditches. He said "Yeah, people dump their fish in the ditches when they get tired of them".

This time I kept quiet.

Last year when I was looking for my 125 gallon tank, I called a bunch of LFSs from Houston to Corpus Christi for prices on a black trim AGA 125 tank with two top supports, as I wanted to use three MH pendants on it. I got about four stores tell me that All-Glass no longer made a 125 gal tank and that I would have to buy a "Natures View" tank by Oceanic with a single center support which they also happened to have in stock. (One of the stores was one that is highly regarded by Aquatic Gardeners Association members.) I called All-Glass and they said that I was being lied to. They gave me the number of their distributor in Houston. The distributor had five tanks in stock and gave me the names of LFSs that would be happy to sell me an aquarium. I finally settled on "Pampered Pet" in C.C. who gave me a good price and guaranteed the tank to be free of any scratches (something no one else would ever do for me.) So the moral of this one is never to believe an LFS if they want you to settle for something less than what you really want.

Steve Pituch