I’ll take a shot at this. Please do not think that I am trying to pick a fight, just wanting to point out what I think SS meant (because I have found myself wondering on a few occasions what was happening.) Most of us will just post “PM’d” in the thread itself and send a PM where as you seem to conduct most of the business in public from what you are interested in to the best time to call. There is nothing wrong with that, it just makes people like me wonder why none of the deals worked out when they see you respond to somewhere around 25 or 30 threads about skimmers that you were interested in (and it makes me wonder if you ever did find one after all of that...) Also, when I see somebody who is interested in an item that has good pictures, a great description, a price and the location and then the item is bumped and back for sale the next day I usually wonder why (realizing that the seller may not have even bothered to call you.)
Again, there is nothing necessarily wrong with conducting your business on the board and stating exactly what you are interested in, but you can not be too surprised when somebody asks if you have bought anything after posting well over 150 comments that you are interested in various livestock, setups, reactors, skimmers and tanks ranging from 5 gal to 230 and located in Calgary and Edmonton out to Vancouver. I suppose that I have been wondering if, after all of the posting activity, you have found anything that caught your attention and held it. Yes, people could call to ask (as you mentioned, it is not hard to find you or your contact information) but by asking publically it may satisfy the curiosity of a few people who may be wondering what is up with the high number of posts expressing interest in items for sale and finding those items remaining for sale.
After all of that, the explanation that you are a fish guy interested in changing your tanks around is something that I suspect that most of us understand- you just go about things a little different than most others here. If I tell somebody that I will take something I do, I just use the PM feature to enquire when I am interested in something but want more info or I am wavering. (I suspect that it helps to keep your PM box cleaned out by using the phone for what you are interested in.)
Yes, it is getting off topic from selling turtles, and I did contribute- but what the heck, it is another free bump. I would love to keep a few turtles, but I just do not think that I can find the time for them. I suppose that I could put them on a leash, stake them to the shore and let them go for a swim while I am out on the jet ski this summer... Cue music "born free"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISWOrI0WaLs