Quote:
Originally Posted by sphelps
People at LFS are not professionals by any means in fact I don't know anyone who is a professional in that particular industry. How do you define professional?? Profit margins aren't large enough to employ such "professionals", you're stuck with minimum wage type employees who can bag a fish but certainly aren't experts. The only exception we get these days are the small chain stores which are run by the actual owner who tend to be very knowledgeable, however even with these stores it's only a matter of time before extra staff is brought in.
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actualy by def they are professionals
"n - One who earns a living in a given or implied occupation"
I would never cure the rock in my tank, unless it was a brand new tank set up then why not.. the rock I have cured I have done so in a seperat tank for only the rock.. when I did just waterchanges I actualy had two tanks, when I saw a spike, I would rince the rock and move it to the new water.. then back again for the next spike.. when I did the skimmer method I had the added bonus of being able to keep snails and hermits in with the rock to clean it up with out any die off of the clean up crue. doing this the other way would have resulted in massive death of snails and some hermits.
now having said that I have never been accused of under skimming either
at any rate, no store is going to do 100% water changes either.. to expensive. for one you got the water, the wages for the person doing it and the cost of the salt and wear and tear on the ro filters or DI canisters, electricity to heat the water, space for water while it is heating ect.. . Concider what a store will pay for a huge skimmer.. not near what they charge us and it is a write off as an operating cost. A relitivly new store in Vic has huge skimmers on there rock, they may do water changes also, but they seam to be providing the best enviorment they can.
As well when a store normaly gets rock in it is still pretty fresh and there is minimal die off so realy the load on the skimmer isn't that great. But I think more important would be the "no light" which I don't see anyone doing as they want to move the rock out as fast as they can.
I know store owners don't want to dedicate the Sq^ft to taking care of rock, but if they were going to dedicate it to any type of live stock that is the one to do it with.. as there is no losses so the amout of floor space is always good to make money.. now having said that I would definatly try to do a rack system to minimize the floor area.
one of the better stores for rock (well at least 8 years ago) had two 500 gal containers for rock.. never did a waterchange and was horably under skimmed, but the rock still came out nice. the problem is that LR is a filter in its self and will clear up a horable tank, but another problem arizes from this in that the more rock sucks up the more its pours become plugged up and the less it can filter.. so a store that just dumps rock in a tank and lets it sit till it is cured is decreasing the life span of the rock.. as far as for what I have seen for water changes the stores that do do them usaly do so after the rock had cleared the water so at that point they are doing nothing but waisting salt. what they need to do is conduct a water change as soon as they notice amonia in order to get the crap out of the water.
anyways we've beet this to death.. stores will do one or the other or a combanation of both.. some will light some won't, so decide what you want and find a store that does it that way
Steve