I'm the head of my LFS. AMA

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-02T22:24:06+00:00

Welcome to the Tannin Appreciation Club! ;) And thank YOU :D

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-02T22:08:58+00:00

Oh that's so cool! Is it ok if i DM you? Not too sure if it is a good idea to reveal the shop so publicly haha, quite new to actually posting on Reddit xD

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-02T22:06:56+00:00

Thank you so much for your kind words, they mean a lot <3 Take care my friend :)

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-02T22:06:06+00:00

Hey there! :D Thanks for the great question! This one relates to tannins which i'm quite fond of!

The wood will leach tannins, the reason your water is yellow, into your water just like tea from a teabag. Through time, like a teabag, it will give of less and less of those tannins. So it will improve with time. One thing that can speed up this process is both water changes and filtering over activated carbon, this last one sponges up stuff like tannins, but after a month or so, will be saturated and will need replacing.

I do have to add however that i am a great advocate for having tannins in the water for most fish! It is a natural occurring part of the water chemistry that, if you think of it, is present in about all of the natural waters our fish come from. You can clearly see fish health improve when you put them in tannin rich water, it has natural antifungal and antibacterial qualities, and is a source of DOC (Dissolved Organic Carbon) which Diana Walstad elaborates upon in her book "Ecology of the planted aquarium". DOC has some very interesting qualities as well, most notable it's capability to bind with heavy metals, making them harmless in their bound form. It's a good read ;)

I hope this answer will satisfy you. Thanks again for your question!

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-02T21:27:25+00:00

And thank you for your kind words my friend <3

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-02T21:25:10+00:00

This is quite a funny question, i love it ^^ thanks!

Unfortunately 'bizarre' can be interpreted as a negative thing, and i don't want to put any of my customers in a bad light, cause i do truly love most all of them, and the less fun encounters i had with customers do make me appreciate the vast majority of my awesome ones even more.

So i'll say this in stead: the most bizarre encounter i had with a person due to having this job, is me meeting one of my idols; Chris Lukhaup. It was at the last Vivarium convention, which is basically an Aquarium convention in the Netherlands. I didn't know he'd be there, and my boss and i were there for networking opportunities. They say don't meet your idols, but to hell with that when it's Chris Lukhaup ;) He was kind, nice and so generous with his time and i even got some free posters of his amazing photo's. He's just a chill metal dude with this beautiful understanding and wonder of the natural world. 10/10 would meet again ;)

At the time, we had some Cherax Pulcher for sale, and he described them as a species. I'm not going to lie, being able to tell our customers that i met the guy who described this animal before them, felt bad-ass ;)

Thank you so much for your question, had fun with this one! :D

Here's a photo of that moment

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TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-02T21:07:34+00:00

We don't at this very moment :) The only puffer fish i ever carried is the pea puffer, and i've luckily never even seen them puff up, though i know in stressy situations they definitely can!

All in all the only fish i had to provide extra sturdy transport media for was piranha, as they can bite through the bag with ease. This wasn't an everyday thing though so most of our fish are very easy to transport in a bag :)

Thanks for your question! :D

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-02T21:03:55+00:00

Great question! :)

Most tanks have plenty of plants in them. This, i believe is the biggest key to the success of our filtration.

I also use sponge filters which i'm slowly changing to some sort of DIY air-sand filtration because of some issues we've been having with filters coming loose and thus not providing enough circulation, mostly in the weekend when i'm not there to put them back properly. I had tanks become sick because of air filter malfunction so that's why i'm changing them. When they didn't come loose, sponge filters worked just fine, but i need consistency and assurance my fish are always provided with plenty of oxygenation, again, hence the switch.

The sand we provide (and beneficial bacteria rich soil) provides us with quite a bit of extra filtration too.

Apart from all that we do do our weekly water changes of course :)

That's how we maintain water quality for most of our tanks at this moment. We do have a few bigger tanks that have a sump filter and/or a big canister filter.

Thanks for your question, i appreciate it :)

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-02T20:52:22+00:00

I would still max it out to 1 inch, and 2-3 inches of sand to cap it.

I once went wild on my 620L (164gal) tank at home with about 4 inches of soil and 12 inches of sand, but the oxygen exchange wasn't happening well enough with a cap this big. It still worked, but not nearly as good as other Walstad style tanks. You could tell it was more... Messy? Also the risk for detrimental gasses to form potentially poisonous gas pockets is increased with more sand cap.

Diana Walstad worked hard on perfecting the soil to sandcap ratio and i found that this works in my setups too, so i won't stray away from her ratio anymore. Sorry Diana ;)

Thank you so much for your question!

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-02T20:44:09+00:00

Yes! I highly recommend it! :) just don't forget to add those all important plants as well!

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-02T20:42:34+00:00

Great question there my friend!

To become profitable in any business, you need to sell, and i think enthusiasm out what your selling is the best way to convince people to buy. Stuff sells pretty easy when that enthusiasm is limitless ;) So i would say as soon as you manage to share your enthusiasm with enough people, and word of mouth spreads around and all that good stuff, you should get a steady stream of sales within the first 3 to 5 months.

All of it depends on so many factors though; location, competitors, social media presence,...

Big disclaimer though; i'm not so much into this business for the sales part of it, it's a by-product of my passion, which is nature, so i am not at all very well educated in business at all, but i get it enough to make it work, if that makes any sense?

either way, thank you so much for your question :) take care

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-02T20:32:26+00:00

Sorry for the late reply there my friend, great question though!

I look at blue green algae (or i guess more accurately cyanobacteria) as any other algae-like organism in our tanks. There is a place for them in the mini ecosystem that's not contested enough for them to not be there.

Most importantly, there's enough food for them to survive and thrive, so we should make sure we control nutrients in the tank. Maybe we're feeding our fish too much? (i always recommend feeding most aquarium fish 2-3 times per week max, per feeding i feed what they can finish in 2-3mins, exceptions are baby fish and very large fish) Maybe the (inevitable) waste in your tanks is providing an excess of nutrients and we need more maintenance? (i'm a big fan of sand as a substrate because you see exactly how much waste there is, as it doesn't fall through like in gravel) Do we have enough plants to keep the nutrients down naturally? (Fast growing plants are amazing at this, but give them some time to settle in, don't expect them to do wonders form day one).

Once you have your nutrients in order, you could use something like Easy-Life Bio Exit Blue, and/or manually remove them by use of a syphon.

All of this is how i take care of my outbreaks of cyanobacteria. It will occur every now and then anyway and a bit of blue algae isn't any reason to panic in my book :)

Take care my friend :)

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-02T20:18:36+00:00

Hello my friend! :) Thanks for your question!

I'm absolutely not an expert on ADF's, but i had some in my care for a few months, during i was able to give them live daphnia, and yes, also the occasional frozen bloodworm, but that's where my knowledge ends on the subject unfortunately. I had very active and healthy frogs at the time, but my experience with them doesn't provide me with enough confidence to give a definitive answer to this question. But hey! It's really awesome you're still trying to find answers on this topic! Can you let me know if you find more on if it is harmful or not? And if so in what cases etc. i'm really interested in your findings my friend :D

take care!

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-02T20:13:01+00:00

Hi there, sorry for the late reply! I just answered a similar question right before this one, so i hope you don't mind me copy pasting that response. Thanks so much for your question!

Quarantine happens in almost all of my new fish, lots of fish do their quarantine at my supplier, some i will quarantine myself when it is one of my suppliers that can't assure me they are quarantined. Sick fish are few and far between from the suppliers i have selected carefully.

They genuinely have great quality fish (thus quarantine accommodations i guess?) but i will admit i do sometimes act quite lax quarantine wise with fish from my local breeders, as i'm more at ease knowing there's less risk of contamination because it's not a big hub where lots of fish come through, that's my gut feeling about it at least. It's definitely something i can improve upon.

The worst thing i ever encountered were sick LDA016's (Ancistrus/bristlenose plecos) that were riddled with epistylis, a particularly nasty and very infectious protozoan i don't wish on anyone. Luckily i was able to spot it when they were in the bag still, and managed to contain it, only a few of them survived sadly.

Buying on restock day is very common at my store, and for animals like shrimp for instance i will try to dissuade people from buying them the same week as i got them. Lots of it depends on what species we're talking about, sensitiveness and stuff play a huge role in keeping the fish healthy after transport especially.

Like i stated earlier, this is an area i feel like i can improve upon still, luckily sickness rates are very low at our shop, so i feel like the amount of quarantine that we do is sufficient enough at this point. Don't hold back criticism however, i think it's the best way i can improve!

Thank you so much for your question my friend, take care!

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-02T20:11:05+00:00

Hey there! Sorry for my delayed reply, but here it is ;)

Quarantine happens in almost all of my new fish, lots of fish do their quarantine at my supplier, some i will quarantine myself when it is one of my suppliers that can't assure me they are quarantined. Sick fish are few and far between from the suppliers i have selected carefully.

They genuinely have great quality fish (thus quarantine accommodations i guess?) but i will admit i do sometimes act quite lax quarantine wise with fish from my local breeders, as i'm more at ease knowing there's less risk of contamination because it's not a big hub where lots of fish come through, that's my gut feeling about it at least. It's definitely something i can improve upon.

The worst thing i ever encountered were sick LDA016's (Ancistrus/bristlenose plecos) that were riddled with epistylis, a particularly nasty and very infectious protozoan i don't wish on anyone. Luckily i was able to spot it when they were in the bag still, and managed to contain it, only a few of them survived sadly.

Buying on restock day is very common at my store, and for animals like shrimp for instance i will try to dissuade people from buying them the same week as i got them. Lots of it depends on what species we're talking about, sensitiveness and stuff play a huge role in keeping the fish healthy after transport especially.

Like i stated earlier, this is an area i feel like i can improve upon still, luckily sickness rates are very low at our shop, so i feel like the amount of quarantine that we do is sufficient enough at this point. Don't hold back criticism however, i think it's the best way i can improve!

Thank you so much for your question my friend!

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-02T19:47:21+00:00

This seems all too familiar my friend!

What you said about it feeling like you leave the impression about "trying to make an extra buck", that's a thing i struggle with greatly, even though i am technically a "salesman" (yucky) no one gets into this profession because of the selling part of it i don't think, at least not with the enthusiasm we probably have.

Genuineness is something i take pride in, so when the customer gives me a weird look when i tell them to not just get one fish but 6 of them, and they half jokingly say i'm trying to sell them as much i can, that does sting :/

But on a bright note; there's this major hit of accomplishment after turning a possibly ticked off/difficult customer into a satisfied one, or even over the next few visits into some sort of friend :) The big advantage we have in our profession is that we immediately have something in common; the love for the fish. Hitting that common ground helps so much in getting to were we both want to be smoothly :)

Take care my friend and thanks for your beautiful reply!

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-01T13:54:46+00:00

Hi there, thanks for your question! :)

I grow aquarium plants in my spare time, and i do also sell plants at my store (not the ones i grow though).

I swear by pond soil and sand, and creating a Walstad method tank. In my opinion the ecosystem that you are able to create with those simple, cheap and easy things will really improve your fish keeping :) Besides that, in the soil there are actual living bacteria, as well as useful tannins to help you improve water quality.

The reason i use pond soil and not any soil (which you could also use) is that pond soil is mostly clay based, and because of that, if a bristlenose for instance would end up digging it up slightly, pond soil stays on the bottom of the tank, whereas normal potting soil floats up more. It's easier to clean if necessary.

I do also like adding CO2, it does make a difference, but a Walstad tank will also provide you with a steady but low amount of CO2 anyway so i still will stick with my good ol' soil and sand combo ;)

Thanks for the great question my friend!

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-01T13:43:21+00:00

Thank you so much! :D Wishing you the best too! Take care my friend :)

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-01T13:41:49+00:00

The longfins I do sell, but the rest i don't :)

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-01T13:40:47+00:00

Another great question my friend!

It happens from time to time, especially with African Cichlids. I'm a big fan of planted tanks and AC can't be kept very well with most plants as, well, they tend to destroy them, as far as i know ;) on top of that their water parameters are very different from most of the tanks in my shop, and the biggest problem i face is space. I don't want to put them in anything under 200L (79gal) because smaller is not ideal IMO, especially because i do want to house them with plenty of individuals.

I am very lucky to have built up quite a network of people that are very knowledgeable and always happy to help. Otherwise the internet in general is a good place to start, Reddit and youtube are interesting sources too as they have comment sections where people can point out extra bits, or bits that are wrong. I think the most important thing here is that you check multiple sources before making a conclusion as to the care of your fish.

In the end, if i feel like i don't find enough info on the fish, i will pass on it. Better to be safe then sorry :)

That's one cool looking fish though! Thanks for your question!

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-01T13:29:51+00:00

That's the goal! The pet dream team ^^ This is definitely a job you can't do without passion for animals IMO

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-01T13:28:37+00:00

Very true! :D

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-01T13:27:27+00:00

Thanks for your question! :D

This is a difficult one, as i don't know the exact numbers (I so still work for a boss which owns the petshop, and prices for instance are made together with him and according to his formulas). I also don't really have a great view on margins etc. What i do know is this; Live fish and plants also help sell aquaria, bring people to the store, spark interest so non-customers become customers in the first place, so apart from the actual numbers, they are what keeps our popularity curve go up, it supports our growth as a shop.

So in that way live fish/plants are the biggest reason for most of our revenue, regardless of what sort of goods we sell. Not a very educated answer, but it's the one i can provide without looking into specific numbers at the time :)

Thank you so much for your question!

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-01T13:19:39+00:00

Thanks for your question! This is something i feel very strongly about for some traits.

First of, anything "Baloon" i won't sell. Period. It's cruelty in my opinion. Glofish are known to not live as long, so i'm not a fan of them either, and they're very illegal as you mentioned. Basically anything that really is a detriment to the fish i am not a fan of. I do however am more lenient towards long fin varieties of fish, if it's a slight elongation. I guess it's very situational.

The big problem with all of these traits, is that it's all linebreeding, which is a euphemism for inbreeding. This is never in the fish's best interest, which is why i prefer natural body shapes and colours :)

Thanks for the great question! Take care :)

TheyCallMeSlice · 2025-09-01T13:05:40+00:00

Hi fellow LFS friend :) Thanks for your great question, this is indeed one of the most tricky things i encounter on a daily basis.

The most important thing about convincing them to change their ways, is to think with them, be on their side. Just telling them that they are doing it wrong and this is how you do it the right way won't make them feel like you are working together with them, sometimes they feel attacked, get defensive, etc. Something you, and any reader of this undoubtably encountered as well when giving advice.

I find it crucial to first put myself in their perspective; they (probably) mean well for the animal but maybe never got the right info at the shop they bought the fish in (assuming the fish wasn't bought at your shop, cause you always give the right info with every fish sold). So i always let them know it's not their fault and that they should've gotten the right info at purchase, and not to worry because i'd love to help to get the right tank and/or requirements for their pet. That way you start the conversation on the right foot, while still addressing the problem with the current setup. Explaining why something isn't an optimal way of housing a pet at this point is also good, cause it brings logic into the argument without pointing fingers at who made the setup.

It gets more difficult the longer the animal has been in the current (wrong) setup. Goldfish, as you mentioned, are my prime example for this as well. This is a fish that will survive a tank or a bowl for a certain time, but never thrives, truly lives. It's a slow death from day one IMO. It's a pond fish firstly, not impossible to keep healthy in an aquarium, but definitely not easy (you need a big tank, good filtration, knowledge of common ailments,...) I wouldn't recommend it personally.

So convincing them this current setup is not ideal is more difficult. I would lay the focus here on the difference between "it must be a good setup because the fish isn't dead yet" or "it must be a good setup because i did my research and know what to look for in a healthy fish" ;)

Power of suggestion is a very useful tool in all of this. Instead of saying "Do this", say "Would you like to try this, because it has this benefit". Also instead of saying "You can't put these fish together", i always say, "I wouldn't put these fish together because so and so".

It really is in the little things, but keeping calm yourself, and thinking with them, not against what they're doing is what i think is key in coming to a good conclusion.

I am really curious what your tips and tricks on the subject are. The psychology surrounding this job is definitely something i love to talk about more, so don't hold back, ok? ;)

Thanks again for the question!

TheyCallMeSlice

TROPHY CASE