We're Sick of the LFS

From the perspective of an ex employee and regular.

Your local fish stores are not just capsizing - they're pulling their customers under to drown too. As a customer, and an ex employee, it is glaringly obvious to me that the old pros are NOT shopping at local fish stores anymore. From me, to the friends I used to go to stores with, many of us are pulling back heavily on our frequenting of old favourites, in favour of trading with local hobbyists and seeking out newer ways to obtain our essentials.

First of all, one thing that has changed was the 300% markup on trade-ins. Most LFS in proximity to each other will often price match, in order to make sure that customers are frequent in their store as well as their competitors. It is basically impossible to set up a situation in which customers are only going to choose ONE to go to especially if they are coming from a far distance in order to visit. No, they'll stop in both.
I noticed that the fish stores near my place started charging almost $40 for a fish that had been relinquished to the store, went in the past these fish typically went from anywhere between $10-$25. I used to keep fancy goldfish and typically was very happy to take in a larger slightly wonky looking rescue for $10 but now that they are indiscriminately being priced at 30, it's absolutely not worth it. Because I am not about to pay the incredibly steep price that imports come with along with a shorter lifespan, I am simply just choosing to keep different species. I have noticed that the trade-in section has become very popular in the past couple of years, mainly because I'm guessing people are noticing that the imports LFS typically carry tend to have short and stressful lives. Trade ins have been established already, and are often pellet trained, socialized and have some kind of a functioning immune system.
My ISSUE with trade-ins is that no matter how much the pet store says they have taken care of them, they are always going to need some form of rehab. Think of your average middle aged pet being jostled around in the shelter system. I just feel they have a fairly high chance of survival compared to imports who have been hatched and raised often in a completely foreign environment. And through all this, the LFS is there to mark them up from $10 to $30. A 300% markup.

In terms of anything else, they will give you inappropriate advice because for some reason owners of these stores do not want to hire professionals. They want to hire people that will never argue with them and never present any issues so they continually hire people with very little experience. And you cannot correct them, they operate as a hive mind and will come out the other side with more misinformation. I have to understand how often hobbyists get into debates, debates that last decades and decades and never get resolved. This is absolutely not conducive to business but unfortunately, without conflicting viewpoints, unadulterated passion and the chaos of different types of fishkeepers, the general morale of the staff devolves into noncommitance.
"I don't know, it should be fine" they say as they bag up the sand sifting starfish for your 20 gallon, 2 month old marine tank.
This issue has gone so severe that I can actually spot, on a completely anonymous online listing, where a certain customer actually picked up their fish. I can just tell which LFS sold them such a horrible stocking, and I have actually rescued several fish this way. From Reddit, to Free Facebook groups, I have found fish from all over the GTA that should never have been sold in the first place.
Often times these stores basically shoot their customers in the foot making it so they are forced to stop their aquatic journey. Selling a tiny tank, incompatible species, inappropriate equipment or anything that these stores typically stock is going to contribute to that. A beginner is going to start to get frustrated and eventually they will just give up and try to offload the project. And then they will not be back to your store.
These stores are essentially taxing beginners, and old pros are starting to understand that. Instead of rushing into the store to purchase these bright shiny fish at a new price, we basically wait on Facebook groups like hungry seagulls for idiots to run inside your store, purchase your fish and then spit them out a week later.
The funny part is that often these fish are free and/or extremely inexpensive because somebody has bought them accidentally. Of course, it makes it a little harder to choose what you're going to stock but you never know what you're going to find. If you have a lot of aquariums like me, the idea of paying for a fish seems absolutely ludicrous. For instance a medium ghost knife goes for almost $40 at Big Al's.

Last week on a free group I saw somebody giving away two for free. They were sold the fish, as a beginner re-entering the hobby even though they are a niche specialty fish. I don't know if this person actually knew about the trade-in program, that they could bring this fish to the store to get a measly $10 apiece back, but for whatever reason they were kind enough to bring them to me to make sure they had a good home so they could go back to the pet store and purchase some fish like platies and guppies. Even if I had paid what the pet store would have paid, I would have given this man a very small amount of money in comparison to what they are charging.
Instead of paying $80 for two of these fish I paid nothing and I know for a fact that the pet store usually gives customers a third of the price for trade-ins. If I had matched this then I could've given him $20 for the two ghost knives. Basically what I'm saying, is that these local fish stores are frantically holding on as middlemen in order to try to make money and also stay relevant within the community. However, their tactics are becoming greedy and divisive. It won't be very long before most a few stores capsize because nobody is actually buying anything in the tanks anymore.
Once this new generation of fishkeepers becomes sick and tired of bringing home incompatible species, melting plants and subpar equipment, these LFS are going to become dank, dark and dusty just like they did in the 2000s following the aquarium craze of the 90s. But with this recession making that one seem like a joke, I don't see how many will stay afloat without the good word of the community.

Women constantly being pushed to side for male customers, employees basically only getting a fair shot at a position if they are a man, and finally the overall racism that occurs between employees and customers at most of these stores are just a few of the reasons why many people in this community aren't interested in frequenting the LFS anymore. People are just going to get sick of the social and financial barriers and find other ways to pursue their passions.

I am telling you now, the hobby will never die. The hobbyists however, like a desperate male fish during the end of the breeding season, will start puddle jumping. Though these fish stores think themselves a great lake, watch how quickly a lake turns to sludge when the biodiversity crashes.