When it comes to marine live stock, it is the life blood of our aquarium. We want everything best at the cheapest cost and for that we do every thing possible. We even reaching out the wholesaler or even the exporters of other countries for that, but that is ok, it is our human nature, but in this whole process we forget that, what we are buying is alive, it has life in it and life doesn’t have a MRP.
Here is typical live stock chain. It all starts with a demand on land which ultimately goes first to the breeder if any or it would go to the fisherman across the world and then they would dive inside the ocean or the ocean farms and catch them. The catch then is taken to the distribution centers, here all paper work is carried out. This is the first time when these live stock have been introduced in an aquarium. Here the live stock is re-packed, placed in boxes and shipped to a importer or the wholesaler. These importer or the wholesalers would then break the bulk in his aquarium setup. Then again these are shipped to the retailer across the country. Stress on the Live stock is immense during the whole process.
Now when we break this chain a lot of life risk is carried by us, as we at home or offices are not equipped to quarantine them, we directly add them to our display tank. So what ever worms or parasite are there present on the live stock, has been introduced in our system. These worms and parasites are so micro that we can not see them with our naked eyes and when we notice the effects of them, that is the time we realize that there is something wrong. With out cleaning or drying the tank these worms and parasite are not going anywhere. The next lot of live stock we add without drying the tank it will also have the same fate. Ultimately we are in a vicious circle get stock, clean dry the tank and again. Most of the retailers and hobbyist sellers treat the live stock for any parasite and worms. They are equipped to do that. A retailer would have all the equipment, additives, food, medic and the best is they have ready tanks to isolate and treat them.
So if we see when we break a chain we are miss managing the live stock, we are breaking the chain, we are wasting our time cleaning the tank and the best part is we are paying thru our nose and also we are not enjoying the tank.
We also restrict our self to only few species, when we buy direct as in quantity matters and when we source locally we see the real selection of different wholesalers or importers as in we restrict our self to only one list from one seller when we go wholesale. This means all the retailers and hobbyist sellers would have larger selection than one single wholesaler. This also ultimately leads to live stock compatibility issue when we go wholesale.
And even so, if you still want to go out large we recommend to install a quarantine tank, treat the live stock and then only put them in your display tank. Save as many as you can because they are important to us.
