Nathan hill

Tailpiece

A THOUGHT OCCURRED TO me this past weekend as I was helping out a hobbyist in an aquatic store, and running through what, after decades in the industry, now feel like automated lines: How long has the tank been running? When did you last test, and what did you test for? What other fish have you got in the tank? How big is it? What temperature?

I’ve no doubt that all of us have been on the receiving end of such questions, and for some of us (especially in our early days) they would no doubt have stopped us from making a grave mistake. I’ve also no doubt that in our later days, we all smiled politely as we were asked them by a shop worker with way less experience and knowledge than ourselves (it does happen, alas). We just went through the motions without feeling the need to take the wind out of their sails.

What bothered me (as the questioner) was that my own customer professed to having kept fish for ‘as long as they could remember’, but had absolutely no clue what they were doing, nor even the fish species they had, referring to them only by vague shapes and colours, occasionally pointing to things in the store’s tanks that looked similar. ‘So, what else can I have, and what else do I need to do?’ I was asked, and it dawned on me that this customer was entrusting all of the care of their aquarium on to me. They proceeded to point at other colourful things and ask if each would be suitable with their existing, unidentified fish. The more I probed, the more I realised they’d not learnt a single thing about aquaria They were 100% reliant on store staff for everything.

Since then, I’ve been brooding on the customer/retailer dynamic, and wondering whether some stores run the risk of becoming something like an aquatic ‘nanny state’ for disinterested fishkeepers who want fish as ornaments and nothing more.

While the stance of retailers who interrogate their prospective customers makes absolute sense—the welfare of the animal that’s about to be sold must take absolute priority—does