You either misunderstood, or have digressed from my point. In my view, i'm either going to expose the fish to ammonia and nitrite or i'm not.
And you have missed my point (to which you replied) that a source of ammonia or nitrite in the tap water is not a good thing as how do we treat elevated levels in a fish in cycle? Water changes. You seem to see no problem with trying to water changes with water that has ammonia in it because the fish will already have ammonia in their water.
Are you really again suggesting you see no benefit in a fish in cycle from identifying beforehand a level of ammonia or nitrite in the tap water? If so then I feel our discussion here has reached an impasse.
Pet shop or fish shop if you don't have good product knowledge you shouldn't be in a position to give advice. I worked retail in a DIY store for a number of years. Imagine if I had just given willy-nilly wrong advice for what people needed to do any given project?
I worked hard for my product knowledge (For every section you pass you get an extra few quid per month - not much, but pride in your work surely should mean something?), if the customer wanted to know about something I wasn't clued up about, then I'd ask my team leader or call a person from that section.
And I bet no one touched giving advice about the actual ins and outs of many aspects of DIY with a barge pole. If someone came and asked about rewiring their house or playing with some gas pipes I am willing to bet you advised them to seek professional advice and did not give advice on how to do it. DIY stores sell the necessary tools to do electrical and gas work, they do not train you in how to do it. You have to acquire that knowledge yourself. A car salesperson sells a car, he doesn't teach you how to drive. Why do we expect an lfs to teach us everything about keeping fish.
And suppose that the person you turned to has not kept up on the most recent changes on best practices. They will be giving advice that was very true for when they learnt but which is now generally superseded as the best advice. Their advice is not wrong or bad (as it was considered best when they learnt), just not what is currently considered best practice.
Do you like to think people came on the internet to make fun of the advice you gave just because the person you asked wasn't a fully qualified sparky and as such didn't know the current best practice through no actual fault of your own, but because the source of your knowledge was not as up to date as yours?
Regardless of what animal they are selling, they should have a strong basic knowledge before they are allowed to give "advice" to the general public.
I wonder how many of the staff tell people to feed their rabbits lettuce?
Probably most. It's what we always did with our rabbits, but then we weren't members of a pet forum, but rather just people keeping (and breeding) rodents who were never told different by our vets who knew what the diet we gave was. Indeed, the advice on lettuce for rabbits appears far from fully agreed across both laymen advice and people reporting their vet's advice.
I wonder how many people expect other salespeople to do all the research for them and dispense said advice without any remuneration being paid for said knowledge.
And finally, just what exactly should an lfs have to know in your view? As is exampled quite well in
this thread there is absolutely no consensus on
any single aspect on how to keep fish. Craster tried to claim there are two hard and fast rules - that the tank must be cycled and that water must be dechlorinated. Bignose quite rightly points out that frequent water changes make a filter redundant (small scale example is a betta bowl) and points to the experiences and evidence that dechlorinating does not appear to be as necessary as everyone thought.
Now just imagine if an lfs employee told you that you don't need to worry about chloramine as the filter bacteria can metabolise the amine part and the chlora off gasses without issue. You would almost certainly come on here posting something like "the lfs said I don't need dechlorinator with chloramine in my water, how bad is that advice" and many would come and support you saying that the lfs is doing his best to kill all your filter bacteria and make you have to keep buying more fish as they die.
However, to support the comment that chloramine is no great problem the lfs can refer to the following papers:
Regan, Harrington, and Noguera: "Ammonia- and Nitrite-Oxidizing Bacterial Communities in a Pilot-Scale Chloraminated Drinking Water Distribution System"
Applied and Enviromental Microbiology 2002.
Wolfe et al. "Occurrence of nitrification in chloranimated distribution systems" Journal
American Water Works Association, 1996
The above papers point towards water companies finding higher levels of
Nitrosomonas spp,
Nitrobacter spp and
Nitrospira spp of bacteria (which are the bacteria responsible for dealing with ammonia and nitrite in our tanks) in water treated with chloramine.
So here we would have an lfs far more knowledgeable than most of this forum on treating water for the tank yet almost certainly still in for a complaining thread. So, given that there are absolutely no universal "truths" on keeping fish beyond "They will need some water" (cheers Tolak, that was quite an end to the Giants-Panthers
), exactly what knowledge and advice should the lfs employee have and dispense?
And for those with a shorter attention span: (yes, you Ace
)
tl;dr: There is no consensus on any aspect of fishkeeping at all, don't be surprised that the lfs advice is different to yours or many of the members of this forum.
