Looking for leopard or speckled epaulette

[its just laurie]

Hi all, I’m looking to add a leopard or speckled epaulette to my 500g. In a perfect world if I can find a male and female I would take obviously buy both. I’ve been on a forever search but I want to find a shark(s) not in pupping years. I raised too many that I want to enjoy watching them and feeding them rather than worrying about them staying healthy until they grow. I’m aware expense. But looking for anyone who might want to rehome or anyone who might know a wholesaler or resaler

 

[Eggs]

I’m not sure if it’s exactly what you’re looking for but NY Aquatic shows an Epaulette on their site.
You could probably find a video of them feeding from one of their past live sales (you can access videos on their Facebook page).

Epaulette Shark-Australia, 15-18”

Epaulette Shark

nyaquatic.com

 

[its just laurie]

Oh, I know them well. No!!!! I will never ever use them again. The worse seller ever and the only person I’ve known who can alter google reviews and remove them. There’s no shortage of hate for him but if you know him only online it’s a bit different.


That stock photo if you reverse Google image it is from 2018. That’s the same photo of an epaulette I purchased at the beginning of the year. He charged my card the next day and then sold the shark to somebody else. If it was just an instant sale and a bot charges your credit card different story, but this is a whole day later so someone had to have seen the order. Nobody reached out to tell me the shark was sold. Eventually, by the end of the week after I reached out to him, he said the shark was gone, but he would be getting more in the next week. Fast-forward two weeks go by no new sharks.
Now I’ve ordered from him in the past, but only online and never had a reason to question the cleanliness and the caretaking of his fish but after this I was like huh this is getting weird so I went to the warehouse in Yonkers because I’m not far off in New Jersey for every fish that is alive and healthy there are two dead and one sick often in the same time with high values. So once I saw that I wanted a refund but he denied he said store credit pick what you want. Very encouraging, especially after seeing all the dead fish and this is a warehouse so it’s massive and I mean wall-to-wall fish tanks, breeding boxes, and a really bad stench. His sharks he keeps in a pool upstairs past the coral room. When I was there, he had a certain type of shark that is actually illegal to possess in the state of New York. But I’m not getting involved in that. I just walked right out of that room. Don’t wanna see it. Don’t wanna know about it. But you can’t sell sharks that are gonna grow to 7 feet in length that are considered very dangerous to non-authorized personnel all I’m gonna say. So I ended up picking a yellow Japanese wild tank, which made me scratch my head at first because I’ve never heard of a while that’s yellow being endemic to the city of Japan. But couldn’t get a refund and I don’t personally care for the biota look and again I ordered from him before yes this was a hiccup at first, so I still trusted him so if he told me I was from Japan, I believed him. I also picked a gem tang and I was going to pick a Chevron because of how much the shark cost and I couldn’t get a refund so now is the time I guess to splurge on the fish that I’ve always wanted, but would never buy a normal life. I was surprised he actually had a Chevron because from Hawaii, but I was assured it was all status: legal. Finally saw the Chevron and it looked like crap so passed. He suggested that I take a.dussimeiri. I know I spelled that wrong sorry, never knew much about them never really saw them or if I did never really paid attention by this point I’m tired of being the store. I want to get out of there and so he shows me the tanks that they’re in and has this very sick dussimeri and the other tank has the other tang which looked healthier and no dead fish in that tank. The other tank was fast track into the dead fish on the ground. So I said to him, just not the tank with the dead fish and the sick tang. The tank was very obvious that it had an infection and there was tough of fluffy patches and just not good looking. So even with all that still didn’t equate to the cost of the shark. So then I just grabbed random low-cost fish like clowns and what not because I wanted to get out and go home it was actually starting to gross me out being there and seeing how many dead fish there in each tank. I never would’ve guessed that from ordering online and getting the product I got which I thought came in great condition. The warehouse in person painted a different picture. Well turns out the one fish I did not want what was the fish he gave me. I made it through my quarantine and I know why it did because it had uronema and I was always suspicious after my in person visit that I decided to start seeing what the water quality actually look like I assume there would be some ammonia or nitrate because of travel, but I was curious to see if he treated his systems or what could be accounting for this large amount of animal death. So I copper checked via Hanna and by chromatography or color matching via API. Both yielded results within negligible integers of each other. The scary part the copper was three times the upper limit of normal so these fish are over treated with copper any parasites can develop a resistance to it if dosages are missed if the levels drop a can to a person taking antibiotics all the time if they have a virus, it doesn’t do anything it becomes resistant. So I worked in my local fish store who I know very well and now they know me on a first basis because of all this, but they have given me every single medication on the planet to try to eradicate this and we couldn’t figure out what it was because it responded to nothing, I made it through my entire quarantine for two weeks it looked like the lesion had improved, and I put it into my tank, which did have the normal level of copper because I had tangs in the tank and I know how much they love ich. With an hours the fish develop all these patches that they originally had plus more. I pulled it out again and put into quarantine but too late. It spread the whole tank. It slowly ate the entire meat of the fish and all fish in my tank, including my Achilles, my black tang the tangs I just purchased my sohal, my purple, my yellow my gem my hippo etc. Slowly over the next few months, despite keeping it at bay and trying to improve some dumps or cleared up to some degree, and never fully went away, but I watched very slowly as it ate away at the flesh of my fish, which was horrible. It took 31 days for the dussimeri sold to me to succumb to it illness. While in quarantine, there is nothing that could have nip that it made the condition worse, or prayed upon it. Those white toughs broke down the skin all the way to bone and the same thing happened to every other fish of mine from the tank, the tang came out of immediately despite being quarantine for two weeks. That short period released the plague throughout my entire tank. It took a total of seven months of intense treatment and watching fish get better and relapse and better giving you hope that maybe it’s eradicated but it really isn’t and eventually I lost my entire tank. Thanks to New York aquatic I did everything right I quarantine my fish. I specifically asked for that fish not to be given to me yet that’s what I got. Call them and they tell me too bad. What he did do was offer me a partial refund of $125 however it did not go to me. He sent it to a charity in his name Michael Stern. Normally, I’d say whatever but you can use that as a tax rate off so he used his shadiness. Not only take advantage of me as a trusting buyer, but then he used my ****** situation that he put me in to use a tax right off. So then I was aggravated and I looked more into his business and when I googled epaulettes I put this whole entire situation. I found the same image again and again and it was really weird cause what you see is what you get at the time I ordered so I googled mage searched. That image has been used over and over again since 2018. I don’t believe you can put that as a what you see is what you get if it’s seven years old and has been sold multiple times. Not only that I looked up where a yellow tangs are endemic and low and behold it is not the sea of Japan. It is not even a remote site for them to be found. They are of the Pacific Ocean predominantly Hawaii, which makes the sale and capture of these fish illegal. Had these been captured before the ban , fair game. But the amount of time he has listed them and the quantity has which I still have a whole evidence from this whole **** show there is no way these are pre-band Hawaiian yellow tank. These are illegally sourced My local fish store asked for the postmortem body of my yellow tank because they’re very big into conservation and they ended up sending it out for testing no surprise it wasn’t done to Hawaii based on the food previously ate over the past year and was recently caught. Yes, they can test that based on muscle and the types of vegetation eaten.

I appreciate finding a site that has the sale of sharks, it’ll never be through New York aquatic again also, he inflate his prices quite a bit and honestly after reverse image searching the shark picture from my order and finding out it’s been used over and over again since 2018. I sincerely question if you ever has those sharks in stock and that is the same photo I had when I ordered that shark back in December.

I don’t wanna start an argument on here. I just wanna be transparent about my experience because I was devastated when my stable five-year-old tank collapse because of this. I don’t want this to happen to anybody else and I know he’s got a ton of positive reviews but I can tell you I personally wrote him a negative review on Google and he had taken it down. I do not know how because you’re not supposed to be able to do that but my review is gone and I don’t write negative reviews so if I do, there’s a really big reason why. I came across somebody else on this for him at one point they said the same exact thing he inflate his reviews and deletes the negatives.


So I guess I’m turning into the PSA, if you were local to the tri-state and travel to Yonkers to his shop, please go there in person to make sure your fish are OK or to see the state of his warehouse. Maybe he cleaned it up I don’t know. I don’t want to know, but please take what you read on the seller with a grain of salt. Because my first order was fine and that was because it was shipped. But when I went into the warehouse after learning, my shark was sold after it was purchased and paid for, and no other shark came in as promised, and no refund would be given to me, which is also I find odd and being forced to pick other fish that I didn’t really necessarily want. Getting the sickest of the sick fish that was visibly sick and I said not that, but he somehow picked that fish and gave it to me and I didn’t catch it but he did go through quarantine and it masked it pretty well but when it went into tank with the normal copper level it automatically reappeared and infected the whole tank. I don’t know what told me to save the water bags the fish came in w the water. I put them in a 5 gallon Home Depot bucket the bags with the water non-spilled and not intermixed. Once I saw the reemergence, I knew something was up so again reiterating myself can’t really rely on pneumonia or nitrates because the fish could contaminate that and travel, but wouldnt change would be copper levels. It doesn’t degrade and it’s not affected by products of waste. So that is when I tested it and found it was three times normal therefore the fish are being over treated with copper. Medically, the continuous exposure of copper as such high levels will decrease immune system function, and miss doses will start to develop resistance of whatever thing you were trying to prevent from infecting the fish, causes massive internal organ damage overtime and does not eradicate the pathogen. You’re trying to clear the fish from so even though I quarantined it and ran through every single medication man no matter what I did I was doomed. I’ve never seen a level of 7.5 show up on two different types of tests. Which confirms that the samples valid. Then I checked it on my own water and read a 2.2+\-.1 throwing in the variation of 0.one in case any human error on my part. I ended up having to work with some pretty hazardous chemicals as treatment for these fish, including formaldehyde due to this. I work in medicine. I have a medical degree. I do not want to be playing with formaldehyde. My health does not want formaldehyde anywhere near me but first and foremost I took an oath to do no harm so my goal was to get these fish healthy if I could. I could read you the list of every medication I used at the direction of the owner of my local fish store who has multiple degrees in marine biology and other marine studies. The man knows his stuff and he also is very big on conservation saving fish. Every fish died despite this. Every medication was followed to. the T water changes done frequently.

I know this is a long post. I’m sorry, but after seeing that post mentioned with his store on it, I just want to be transparent about who that person really is selling fish and you’re all welcome to have your own opinion and for your own opinions, but my advice is be cautious And go in person otherwise be prepared to lose your entire tank in my tank was my zen spot from the stress of work and sometimes the stress of losing a patient that you tried to give it you’re all to get them take a turn for the better. That was a robbed. From me. The tank still sits empty as I’m waiting three months for it to be air dried completely to kill anything that could be alive in water and infect, future inhabitants. Right now every day I look at one of my empty tanks constantly reminded my second tank I got after this happened because I wanted to keep my shark as it grew when I found it and also I needed my little slice of Zen because my reef tank and my fowlr tank are my coping mechanisms for my stress and anxiety. If I could scuba diving an ocean Clearwaters every day after work, I would be doing that and just sitting on the bottom of the ocean meditating because it is the most peaceful place on the planet and if I can’t do that the second best thing is keeping a nice healthy Sustainably filled salt water tank(s). But it will never be filled by Michael Stern ever again. Please just do your research for your own opinions. Throw mine to the side. It’s up to you. Welcome to America. You have the freedom to do so. I’m just here to advise you because he can’t delete my comment here. And if it’s really necessary, I can upload all the proof I have from this however I rather not this is my opinion in my detailing of him, but anyone claim that he is an upstanding guy and this can’t be possibly true I will upload it because the truth needs to be sad because there are others like me that lost entire tanks. Fishing and wildlife contacted me after my yellow tang was sent out by the fish store and the results were back that it was a wild tang freshly caught and they asked for documentation of events after buying the fish and the pictures of my water levels that I took from the fish bags. I brought them home in and had the gut feeling to save. They wanted the photos of my deceased fish as well all of which look like they were picked apart by scavengers like vultures. They still follow up with me with certain questions, I pose this to you, if a man is reputable and has nothing to hide, and all this fish are healthy as he claims and all our legal as he claims, why is New York fishing and wildlife still investigating? Why will he not issue a refund right off the bat? Why is he reusing stock images from 7-8 years ago that he took and labeled them as what you see is what you get? Why does he sell orders that have already been purchased? Why if you go to the factory are there two dead fish for every one fish when he claims not, one of his fish are sick that’s always a customer’s fault ? Open ended questions I asked you to ponder before you purchase from him with that. I will leave the experience I had there.