A great experience at a lfs ?

[cepaw]

Hi, I always read the posts about a horrible experience at the lfs
believe me i've had some too, bad advice, sick fish, pushy sales people, some things i've heard are down right laughable...
But yesterday I went to the Salty Critter in Vermillion Ohio
about a 45 min drive for my
First let me say, I went in to ask about salt mixes, the new seachem & tropic marin. I had been using oceanic and my calcium went to around 700ppm, seems others have had this problem too
the owner was there, he not only took the time to talk about the salt mixes, but he asked me questions about my tank, tring to get to the bottom of my problem, we still think it was the salt,
he explained why he uses tropic marin, he did not bash any other brand, store etc, was not pushy, just gave me the info, then let me look around...
the store has a great coral selection, and a lot of equipment I never see in a lfs, t5 lighting, tunze products, pluming, etc
not just some but a really good selection, I could finally look at see with my own eyes things I've only seen on line
then I checked out a few prices, same as or close to on line
I spent around an hour there, I bought my salt mix
got some good info, great experience, I'll be back
if you get the chance chenk it out
Mike

[Spectre2006]

It seems like you can rate the quality of the store based on how high end their product line is in stock at the store. Most stores wont tie up money on really expensive equipment and have it sit on a shelf. I was lucky enough to find MH lighting at the LFS.

But I still don't see other high end equipment at the lfs, i've been pretty much all over the place here locally.

I'm thinking of setting up a psuedo lfs, or it might be just the excuse to have that 5000 gallon salty display tank/office. I wouldn't want to take away business from the other lfs here who depend on revenue to stay in business and pay the bills.

Chris

[witchdoctor]

I actually had a great experience at my first LFS. It was the Aquarium Center, near Baltimore. Two or three sales people were very helpful, and pretty knowledgeable. Turns out, one of them was Mike Wickham, who wrote the Complete Idiot's Guide to Saltwater Aquariums. Later on, they hired a couple of actual idiots, :( so the experience was more variable, but I always liked the place, overall.

[amazingbobby]

Pet Works in Chico, Ca, has treated me darn good. They won't try to sell you things that you don't need and have cut me good deals on more thant one occasion. There is a good base of knowledge in that store and even though their selection of livestock is not always great, everything I have bought there has been healthy and has flourished in my aquarium.

IMO, good employees that are knowledgeble and affable go a long ways to making the store successful.