chipmunkofdoom2
Always Making Something
View BadgesExcellence Award
Article Contributor
Reef Squad Emeritus
AlgaeBarn raises live stock in tanks that have had nothing wild for years and should therefore be clean. Reef cleaners has fish free systems, so their inverts shouldn't be carrying fish diseases.
Do folks who follows the "QT anything wet" philosophy trust those vendors enough to make exceptions when restocking CUC? Any other vendors folks trust?
I'm asking because I usually buy from AlgaeBarn, but they've been out of the inverts I want for a while, so I'm shopping around.
What about BIOTA and ORA tank bred fish? Does anyone who usually QTs stuff from the LFS skip QT for those?
This is a great example of a cognitive bias called the authority bias, authority fallacy, or the appeal to authority fallacy. The idea is that there are trustworth authorities (Algaebarn, Biota, Battlecorals, ORA, Jason Fox, etc), and these authorities are perfect or always 100% trustworthy because of their authority. The truth is that while these authorities are probably very good at what they do and are probably almost entirely trustworthy, they're still human. They make mistakes just like everyone else. They should not be given a blank check of our trust just because they have a good track record or lots of experience.
All it takes is one AEFW to make it undetected into Battlecorals' or Jason Fox's system, and they could ship you corals that inadvertently nuke your tank. All it takes is for one drop of water with ich to fly from a QT tank at Algae Barn to their "clean" chaeto tank; then the macro they send you will be anything but clean. All it takes is one speck of velvet to come in undetected on a new broodstock pair at ORA to infect every system they have. At the end of the day, these aren't superheroes running these places. They're very competent, but still totally prone to failure, humans.
I've order fish from ORA and Biota almost exclusively and have never received a sick fish. The last coral order I got from Adam at Battlecorals was squeaky clean as expected. I always verify in QT. I have too much invested in my aquarium to trust anyone else with its fate.