Well, the 3 Mystus Leucophasis I ordered did not arrive - I've been scammed! The seller is "Aquarium Zone Hatchery" on eBay. There were several red flags that should have tipped me off, but I had a heck of a time finding anyone who had the fish in stock and I guess I didn't want to believe it. The seller is clearly just dropshipping - selling items he doesn't actually have, and then simply ordering them for the buyer from someone who does have them when he gets an order (most of his Cichlids seem to be from Amazon - the same photos and descriptions are on Amazon at the same price, but with free shipping.) The ebay scammer charges $20+ for shipping, so if I ordered the cichlids from him (perhaps assuming that he was the breeder and would have higher qualityfish than an Amazon selller - until recently his profile said "we hand raise every fish"), he'd simply order them for me on Amazon with free shipping at the same price, and pocket the $20 difference I paid for shipping. The listing for the Mystus I ordered used a photo with Aqua Imports's logo watermarked in the corner - they do offer the fish on their site but have been out of stock for a while. I emailed them to double check whether they were affiliated with the ebay seller; they are not, and they were unaware that he was using a photo with their logo on it. A day after that exchange, the ebay listing for MLs with their watermarked photo disappeared - seems like they took action to make sure they would not be associated with a random seller providing a bad experience.
The dropshipping model works okay, and in general I don't have a huge problem with it - every retailer buys items cheaper and sells them at a markup; that's how stores work, and I'm fine with paying that markup for my groceries for the convenience of not having to drive to one farm to pick up eggs and another to get cheese. Even with online shopping it's not a big deal - prices vary from seller to seller and if I want the cheapest price it's on me to find it. If the dude can make his living buying cheap and selling high, seems like a lousy way to make a living but fine.
But the problem arose when he sold me fish that he didn't have and *couldn't actually get.* I paid for FedEx 2-day shipping, received a USPS tracking number, and waited patiently until I realized that the tracking number said the package had not actually shipped. At this point, my anxious and worried bleeding heart was picturing a box of fish dying forgotten in the back room at a post office somewhere. So I reached out to the seller and received no response to several inquiries over several days. Finally I left a nasty feedback, and *immediately* received a nice note from the seller saying that the fish were shipping and asking me to revise my feedback. Turns out, you can only revise ebay feedback once, so if I had changed it to a good review and still not received fish, he'd still be left with a good review. It's a neat gig for him when it works, but in my opinion, when he realized that he had sold me fish that he couldn't get, he should have simply sent me a nice note saying he had made a mistake and didn't have them in stock after all and refunded my money. I would have been disappointed but these things happen, and I wouldn't have realized that he was just a dropshipper.
But he didn't do that - he left me hanging waiting for and worrying about fish that never actually existed, so I went Mama Bear in the defense of these poor forgotten imaginary fish. I told him I'd revise my bad feedback when I received my fish alive and well, and suggested that he upgrade the shipping from USPS to FedEx overnight, since I had paid for FedEx 2-day, and the upgrade could be at his expense to improve my customer service experience. He agreed, and immediately sent me a tracking number saying he had dropped my fish off with FedEx. So I called FedEx - the label was created, but no package received.
Out of curiosity, I ordered a cheap net from him - it arrived in less than 24 hours, directly from Amazon with a gift receipt. I used the gift receipt to initiate a return, so I'll get my money back from Amazon rather than the eBay dork, and he can have the net back - it's unused; he can resell it.
Meanwhile I'd been contacting LFS's in my area (there are a ton of them) with no luck. A guy in a local-ish Facebook group posted his brand new ML and I commented to ask where he got it. He told me, so I called that shop but was unable to reach them. I told the Facebook guy, who was positive they still had some and *contacted his shop on my behalf to confirm.* Nice guy - he didn't have to do any of that. He told me who to call at the store, and when I called yesterday, the LFS guy said, "hey, you must be Mike's friend! I have one left and I'll hold it for you if you'll come today." So I drove 2+ hours there yesterday and they had one beautiful, healthy-looking baby ML left, packed him up for me, and it's settling in here just fine so far.
Sorry for that rant - I didn't post a new thread so hopefully I haven't wasted anyone's time who didn't want to read it. I have never been in the position before of wanting a fish and realizing it was hard to find, and I had no idea that an inexpensive fish would be worth someone's time to scam me. I'll get my money back from ebay, and if for some reason I don't, it won't be the most expensive life lesson I ever learned.
Meanwhile, in the Crime Box, the redtailed shark is being a real jerk to the sun cats. They're a little bigger than he is, and all he's been doing is body slamming them - nothing that could really hurt them, but they were scared at first. They have stopped being scared, and everyone has claimed a territory and things are settling down. The synodontis eupterus, by far my largest fish (and the most entertaining, interactive fish I've ever met), DGAF about the drama and swims around completely unbothered by the other fish, neither starting fights nor engaging in them. Interestingly, the pale spot on his dorsal fin - which was present when I got him and became pure white over the first week - has disappeared entirely. I don't know if that is due to time/healing or nutrition; I read that pale spots like that on eupterus can be due to insufficient veggies in the diet, so I picked up some Hikari algae wafers and other better foods. He doesn't like the algae wafers but will eat them if he's hungry and I'm not offering anything better, so I start with one of those broken into small pieces at feeding time, wait til he eats a bit of that, and then give them something "better" for dessert after he's eaten some salad.
I've added some manzanita branches to the Crime Box - they are pretty, and break up the swimming space to allow the picked-on fish an easy way to evade Megalodon, the redtailed bully. I've clipped some garlic to the protruding branches, allowing the bulbs and leaves to stay out of the water and the roots to grow down. The Garlic Forest is doing quite well and if the enthusiastic root growth continues it'll provide more top level hiding opportunities. I also have some sweet potatoes growing in one of my HOBs and they're doing well - unlike a lot of my plant experiments, sweet potatoes are well documented for their ability to grow this way and produce great roots while also being pretty above the water. Once their roots are more established I plan to hang the plants in the Garlic Trees as well - we'll see.
Pic of Crime Box's current state for the amusement of anyone who bothered to read all this.
The dropshipping model works okay, and in general I don't have a huge problem with it - every retailer buys items cheaper and sells them at a markup; that's how stores work, and I'm fine with paying that markup for my groceries for the convenience of not having to drive to one farm to pick up eggs and another to get cheese. Even with online shopping it's not a big deal - prices vary from seller to seller and if I want the cheapest price it's on me to find it. If the dude can make his living buying cheap and selling high, seems like a lousy way to make a living but fine.
But the problem arose when he sold me fish that he didn't have and *couldn't actually get.* I paid for FedEx 2-day shipping, received a USPS tracking number, and waited patiently until I realized that the tracking number said the package had not actually shipped. At this point, my anxious and worried bleeding heart was picturing a box of fish dying forgotten in the back room at a post office somewhere. So I reached out to the seller and received no response to several inquiries over several days. Finally I left a nasty feedback, and *immediately* received a nice note from the seller saying that the fish were shipping and asking me to revise my feedback. Turns out, you can only revise ebay feedback once, so if I had changed it to a good review and still not received fish, he'd still be left with a good review. It's a neat gig for him when it works, but in my opinion, when he realized that he had sold me fish that he couldn't get, he should have simply sent me a nice note saying he had made a mistake and didn't have them in stock after all and refunded my money. I would have been disappointed but these things happen, and I wouldn't have realized that he was just a dropshipper.
But he didn't do that - he left me hanging waiting for and worrying about fish that never actually existed, so I went Mama Bear in the defense of these poor forgotten imaginary fish. I told him I'd revise my bad feedback when I received my fish alive and well, and suggested that he upgrade the shipping from USPS to FedEx overnight, since I had paid for FedEx 2-day, and the upgrade could be at his expense to improve my customer service experience. He agreed, and immediately sent me a tracking number saying he had dropped my fish off with FedEx. So I called FedEx - the label was created, but no package received.
Out of curiosity, I ordered a cheap net from him - it arrived in less than 24 hours, directly from Amazon with a gift receipt. I used the gift receipt to initiate a return, so I'll get my money back from Amazon rather than the eBay dork, and he can have the net back - it's unused; he can resell it.
Meanwhile I'd been contacting LFS's in my area (there are a ton of them) with no luck. A guy in a local-ish Facebook group posted his brand new ML and I commented to ask where he got it. He told me, so I called that shop but was unable to reach them. I told the Facebook guy, who was positive they still had some and *contacted his shop on my behalf to confirm.* Nice guy - he didn't have to do any of that. He told me who to call at the store, and when I called yesterday, the LFS guy said, "hey, you must be Mike's friend! I have one left and I'll hold it for you if you'll come today." So I drove 2+ hours there yesterday and they had one beautiful, healthy-looking baby ML left, packed him up for me, and it's settling in here just fine so far.
Sorry for that rant - I didn't post a new thread so hopefully I haven't wasted anyone's time who didn't want to read it. I have never been in the position before of wanting a fish and realizing it was hard to find, and I had no idea that an inexpensive fish would be worth someone's time to scam me. I'll get my money back from ebay, and if for some reason I don't, it won't be the most expensive life lesson I ever learned.
Meanwhile, in the Crime Box, the redtailed shark is being a real jerk to the sun cats. They're a little bigger than he is, and all he's been doing is body slamming them - nothing that could really hurt them, but they were scared at first. They have stopped being scared, and everyone has claimed a territory and things are settling down. The synodontis eupterus, by far my largest fish (and the most entertaining, interactive fish I've ever met), DGAF about the drama and swims around completely unbothered by the other fish, neither starting fights nor engaging in them. Interestingly, the pale spot on his dorsal fin - which was present when I got him and became pure white over the first week - has disappeared entirely. I don't know if that is due to time/healing or nutrition; I read that pale spots like that on eupterus can be due to insufficient veggies in the diet, so I picked up some Hikari algae wafers and other better foods. He doesn't like the algae wafers but will eat them if he's hungry and I'm not offering anything better, so I start with one of those broken into small pieces at feeding time, wait til he eats a bit of that, and then give them something "better" for dessert after he's eaten some salad.
I've added some manzanita branches to the Crime Box - they are pretty, and break up the swimming space to allow the picked-on fish an easy way to evade Megalodon, the redtailed bully. I've clipped some garlic to the protruding branches, allowing the bulbs and leaves to stay out of the water and the roots to grow down. The Garlic Forest is doing quite well and if the enthusiastic root growth continues it'll provide more top level hiding opportunities. I also have some sweet potatoes growing in one of my HOBs and they're doing well - unlike a lot of my plant experiments, sweet potatoes are well documented for their ability to grow this way and produce great roots while also being pretty above the water. Once their roots are more established I plan to hang the plants in the Garlic Trees as well - we'll see.
Pic of Crime Box's current state for the amusement of anyone who bothered to read all this.
