Rapid salinity drop, corals unhappy.

No offense taken. I have exclusively gotten my water from Aquarium Adventure and never had any problems before. However, you are correct in saying that I should have tested it before I added it, which would have avoided all my issues. When I was purchasing the water, the fish manager said that the salinity in the storage tank was really high, but that he would adjust it for me in my bucket, he did, unfortunately down to 1.005. Another employee even came up to me and warned me about the water, to which I replied, no worries, Joshua has taken care of it. My confidence in my LFS blinded me to the possibility of any problems. Ignorance is apparently not bliss.

Compensation; for starters an apology would have been nice. The GM of the store, Nick offered none, didn't ask me if I needed any help or make any suggestions at all to have me do to preserve the integrity of my tank. In addition, he would not give me contact info to the owners of the store, which is what Petland Corporate told me I should do.

I don't want anyone fired, but they need a customer service seminar. All I want are the corals that died replaced, because they as the store who sold me the "faulty" water are ultimately responsible for what happened in my tank. I do accept some of the responsibility, but as a noob who has never tested his water before adding to a tank, I will take a portion of it on to myself. I have spent over $1000 in their store since April and you would think that to replace less than $150 in coral would have been the best customer service move, because in this hobby you are in it for the long haul.

Nick, the GMs idea of compensation was refunding me for the water. That is insulting an unacceptable.

Jim

 

Thanks for the support schackmel,

I lost a few corals, have no stars, and have 1 shrimp who I haven't seen since this happened. I am hoping he rode it out, but afraid that the stress weakened him enough so that my yellow tang snuck up on him and...

The GM of the store, Nick was nice enough to offer to refund the cost of my water. Now that is customer service!!!!!!!!!

Needless to say, I want a better resolution than that.

 

Ouch. I agree. Making things right and maintaining a good relationship with you would have been by far the best move for them. Two screw-ups on their part.

$150 is quite a hit and nowhere near the pain free lesson I had thought. Sorry for your loss.


Back to lurking.

 

without reading through ALL the posts, I will share my experience with something stupid I did...

My RO top-off water container went empty and my tank evaporated about 5 gallons of water over a few days... so I set my top off to drip faster than the normal rate to compensate... I was planning on adding just a couple of gallons of top-off water over the course of a day and then set it to a slower rate later on... well, I forgot about it until I found water on the floor and realized that I had been adding Fresh RO water for several days and the sump was overflowing!!! My salinity had dropped from 1.024 to 1.019... my corals looked horrible, but everything else seemed ok.

Well, I brought it back up only by turning off the top off and let water evaporate and replacing the evaporated water over 2 weeks time with saltwater.

Now, all my corals are doing better than ever, except one tiny green bird's nest coral... it still has it's polyps, but it's been bleached for several weeks now... I'm hoping it may come back eventually, but I'm not holding my breath.

Good luck and bring it back up as SLOW as possible!

 

If you buy the wrong gas for your vehicle, and clog up the fuel delivery system, who is responsible? The person who sold you the gas, or you, the person who put the wrong gas in the vehicle? Now if the person pumping the gas into your vehicle is the store employee, then they are responsible because they put it in.

 

Jim, I have not looked at this in a day or two but here is my take,

First off as I told you on the phone the other night "good luck with AA". If they were to apologize to you this would be tantamount to admitting guilt which will never happen, trust me.

And contrary to what wildblue says, I attribute his statement to the fact that he has never dealt with these particular people, I would cut your ties to them, mostly because of what they do and how they deal with people.

I mean to watch one of their customers buy a tank, salt and water and be told by one of them "Yeah you can add your fish right away" then to see that same person selling them fish even after the customer says "but shouldn't I wait to add fish for a little while" well, that just somewhere I would not do business with anymore.

They do not like to see me walk in that place, especially our little friend Josh. I have flat out told more than one customer not to listen to them, that they are wrong and stood there and explained the reasons why they should not buy something.

Second,

yep you right ignorance is not bliss and (your not going to like this) you ultimately have no one to blame but yourself! NOOB or not, you should always check you water before putting anything into your tank! I mean you always check to see if the milk is not sour before drinking it right?

I have always mixed my own water and the very last thing I do before I drain my tank to do a water change is check out all the parameters of the water thats going back in. Including Calc, Alk, Magnesium and most importantly Salinity, that way if there are any adjustments that need to be made I can make them outside the tank which is always the preferred way of making them.

I am really sorry that you lost your corals, I understand your frustration. And like I said I am willing to help you out and replace some of the stuff that you lost with like or something close to them. But you might as well give up on getting any satisfaction out of AA because it just Ain't going to happen Maggee!

Also before going out and purchasing an RO unit, talk to me. I know someone that belongs to JARC that can get you a really good deal on Spectrapure Maxpure RO units, which is what I have.

 

No worries, wish it were a pain-free lesson, but it was less than $150 maybe, hopefully, I'll have to wait and see. I was on the phone with corporate this morning and she was very supportive and that store was her area. I spent a good deal of time writing the franchisees a letter to which I was assured that would receive, I am very cautiously optimistic.

 

I will not buy an RO until we talk, boy is my wife going to be excited about that, LOL.

Mike, I spoke to Emily at corporate this morning and she was very sympathetic to my situation, which is a whole lot more than I can say about Nick, the store manager. I know you think I am nuts, but I spent about an hour writing the store's franchisees a letter explaining the whole situation and am optimistic about getting some kind of resolution. Perhaps, pigs really can fly...

 

Thanks for the encouraging story, I needed it. I still haven't decided if owning a saltwater fish tank is a stress reliever or a stress producer. Oh wait, yes I have...

 

I think it depends on what time we're talking about lol