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Hi All

I have been offered a weekend job at a LFS and whilst im looking forward to it im also a bit worried about how much i actually know about fishkeeping (even though ive been keeping fish for 5 years now) im not sure how many ppl experience this type of anxiety but was hoping all you extremely knowledgable fprofilers could keep your little snipets of advice. I know that is a general question put any advice on how i could get more knowledgeable or sites/books you could recommend would really help!

thanks!

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Truth doesn't always win friends but it influences them

You'll be fine!

Most people will only want to know things like
-what size heater for this tank?
-will these plants die?
-will this fish eat this fish?

and the best one

-all my fish died last week, so I want new ones that won't die, so can y9ou catch me that oscar, 3 neons, the black moor and the glass catfish?

Most people want an active well-stocked tank, low mainainance, with hardy fish. get yourself a cycling diagram, get comfortable with giving them the world's fastest run-down on it and then push the bacteria starter products unless they show keen interest in doing it from scratch.

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

Thanks Callayta!

Will get extremely familiar with the cycle process and pushing products such as cycle..
gng to have to get familiar with tank sizes/heating/lighting and recommended stocking.

i know from posts on this site and other sites that people are gng to be saying ill have one cory and 2 tetras and that pleco would look great in my 10g tank!

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Truth doesn't always win friends but it influences them

that pleco would look great in my 10g tank!

Remember the small commonly found plecos that will work in a 10 or 20(even if that is the majority of the stock). People hate to hear "no" unless it's followed up with "maybe you'll like this similar...." And always tell the truth as best you can, it's ok to say I don't know.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

I got some advice here before I applied for my first job. There are a few other threads floating around out there with this kind of stuff, but I don't remember what their names are.

Unless you luck out big time, the majority of your customers are going to be far less knowledgeable than you. Many will ask foolish questions or have done a poor job with their aquarium. After a while it will be very annoying to have to repeat the same things over and over, sometimes to the same people. Patience is a big thing. You will get to help people who actually know what they're doing, and it is refreshing to be able to talk with them.

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

what LFS is this?

edit: make sure you use L not gals (i often make this mistake)

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''All the clown fish and yellow tangs in the world cant save you now!''

i know from posts on this site and other sites that people are gng to be saying ill have one cory and 2 tetras and that pleco would look great in my 10g tank!

That's not so bad! Brace yourself for the customer who wants an algae eater for the 2-pint kritter keeper she already has two goldfish in!

Good luck. Make sure you know the nitrogen cycle. Other than that you're probably not going to have much trouble as far as knowledge is concerned, IME. Spend more time finding a good way to vent your frustrations that's not in the customer's faces.

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Your biggest hurdle isn't going to be your own knowledge, or lack threof. Your biggest hurdle will be learning to distinguish between the sensible people and the idiots. This includes co-workers as well as customers.

One to watch out for is Mr Spreadsheet Junkie.

Mr Spreadsheet Junkie is to be found in many workplaces, and in all of them displays a combination of myopia and ignorance that is the source of much humour (see Dilbert for some classic examples). Unfortunately, Mr Spreadsheet Junkie tends to be at his most fatuous and inane when he turns up in a business that is handling livestock.

Mr Spreadsheet Junkie needs to be educated with respect to certain elementary principles. The main one being that pushing a product might look good in the short term, but is no substitute for proper advice. Mr Spreadsheet Junkie thinks that all you have to do is sell quick fixes, and all will be well, particularly with regard to the bottom line. Unfortunately, he doesn't realise that this approach, if adopted mindlessly (as is so often the case) leads to disaster. Having people walk in the door, buy the quick fix to address a running sore of a problem, then give up on the fishkeeping enterprise is a great way to run a business ... into the ground. Because eventually, word is spread by dissatisfied customers. "I went there and he sold me this junk that didn't work, so I gave up on fish" soon makes its way along the jungle telegraph. However, "I went there and they told me how to look after my fish and now I have 20 tanks full of breeding fish" also makes its way along the jungle telegraph, and when THAT message does the rounds, it brings in more paying customers. It also signals that the business has a solid revenue foundation, because those successful fishkeepers you started off on the right foot come back, buy food, buy filter media, lighting tubes, and possibly whole new aquaria, followed by more fish, more food, you get the picture. Customers that come back, day in, day out, year in, year out, pay the rent. Customers that continue to do business long term with YOU, as opposed to your competitors, put YOU ahead of your competitors. They also steer other new customers toward YOU instead of your competitors. At times, educating Mr Spreadsheet Junkie with respect to this notion can seem about as worthwhile an enterprise as trying to nail a blancmange to the ceiling, but it has to be done. Because ultimately, if Mr Spreadsheet Junkie has any functioning brain cells at all, he'll thank you for it when his turnover doubles, his profits look a lot more shiny than they did beforehand, and his customers are a lot happier than before, saying lots of nice shiny things about his store and bringing their friends to shop there.

Oh, and while I don't recommend you share this little pearl of wisdom with someone who has had a humour bypass, here's how I once described Common Plecs to a friend who didn't know about fish ...

"Basically, this fish grows to such a size that if I took an adult one and hit you over the head with it, it would kill you."

One of the frustrations you will have to overcome, unless you are in the position to influence stocking purchases, is the fact that quite a few dealers insist upon buying inappropriate species and displaying them in their aquaria. Common Plecs are just one example - fishes that reach two feet in length are NOT 10 gallon setup material! Likewise, all too many outfits have a nasty habit of buying in fishes such as Bala Sharks (whose maintenance requirements dictate a 250 gallon aquariu if you're going to do the job properly) and aggressive Cichlids that may look cute as juveniles when they're well behaved, but which will turn into unholy terrors when sexual maturity kicks in, especially if they're in the wrong setup. Other woeful choices of fish I've seen myself being offered for sale as well as being reported here include Pangasius Catfishes (oh, yes, really sensible to sell to the public a fish that's going to exceed 3 feet when fully grown), Black Ghost Knife Fishes (which should be special order fishes requested by name by people who know what they're doing) and of course, the industry seems to be a never ending supplier of Red Tailed Black Sharks and Clown Loaches to an unsuspecting public who, unaware that the former become territorial and the latter are capable of growing to a size where they'll feed a family of four in Borneo, buy the cute juveniles and end up with a nice time bomb ticking away in their tanks. You're going to have the fun of steering people away from putting these fishes in tiny tanks, and possibly twisting the arm of whoever buys the stock into carrying fewer of them, in pursuit of the goal of turning customers into successful fishkeepers who end up paying the rent for the next 40 years. At times it will seem like a thankless task, but eventually, if you persevere, and win the battle, you'll have achieved something. You'll have educated a new batch of successful fishkeepers, spread ecological awareness, possibly even set Mr Spreadsheet Junkie on the proverbial Road To Damascus whereby he undergoes a conversion into Mr Functioning Brain Cells, and you'll have saved quite a few fishes from an unhappy and miserable end into the bargain.

I wish you luck. The struggle won't be easy, but remember, being conscientious and responsible in your job tends to earn its rewards long term too.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Thank you all for your helpful advice and i will read through as many past threads and soak it all up
gng to have to read up on stocking levels and compatibility. dont want to recommending anything aggressive with something peaceful, especially with cichlids. and i have extrememly limited knowledge on marine as ive never had a marine tank,


thanks for the warning about mr spreadsheet junkie cal
i am worried about that but the guy who owns the place doesnt seem to bad about the pushing part (hopefully!)

im pm you alex cos i dont know what the deal is with mentioning actual names of LFS on the site.

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Truth doesn't always win friends but it influences them

Even though Adam has provided a legal disclaimer at the bottom so that everyone who visits the site knows that people's opinions of certain places are just that, it might be wise to ask Adam directly for further guidelines. IN fact, once he's back to full time duty, putting something in the FAQ with respect to this might be on his 'to do' list if it isn't already there .... hang on, just checking ... hmm, looks like an addition for the future.



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

"Basically, this fish grows to such a size that if I took an adult one and hit you over the head with it, it would kill you."

Very nice. I liked that one.

Pushing products sounds bad I didn't mean to do it at the expense of good advice, but more often than not you get the aesthetic-only people in who have no concept of fishkeeping and you could talk til you were blue in the face and they'd still have no idea, others just go on information overload and ignore the lot anyway (usually while nodding). For those people, and it won't take you long to recognise them, you may as well help the fish try and make it on their own and get a nice sale in the meantime

If you are in Sydney, we are still on high chlorine in the water so standard doses are sometimes not adequate. At the moment I'm double-dosing and avoiding water changes for 4 days after rain.

And if you guys sell the bettas in the small tanks (go for the hard sell there, get 'em into the medium-sized geotanks or Splish&Splash tanks if you can manage ), make sure they go out the door with an ammonia-locking dechlorinator. It'll give them about 4 days in 1L, and 7 days in 2L before the waste products start to build up, give or take

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett