Disgusting. Disturbing.

Somebody walked into a LFS and dumped something into a few of the tanks at a LFS just outside Toronto proper.

There are no words to describe the disgust. Literally hundreds of animals dead or dying. They managed to poison the entire system; the whole freshwater side, all the saltwater tanks and even the frag tanks; all the water in the store.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandg...3/13103016.html

Video now up at this link

http://www.citytv.com/toronto/citynews/new...store-poisoning

that just goes to show how low down and heartless some people in the world are..what goes around comes around. whoever poisoned the system will get their's, some way or another!

I hope this person gets caught and has jail time assessed.

video now in the second link

Id be interested to know what common chemical could nuke a system at that speed using only 250ml... they said it smells like bleach... Could 250ml of bleach do that to a system of that magnitude ?

Horrible loss...

i am speechless....

honestly wth would make someone want to do something like that?

Sour old employee, there are 3 other LFS with .5km or just general d bags...

How could a store like that have no survalience? Looks fishy !

For sure, bleach would nuke the tanks.

My guess is a competitor, a disgruntled employee would've been recognized walking in, competitors can send anyone...



Surveillance = $$$

hopefully it's not the owner trying to make an insurance claim.

You have to have surveillance cameras these days. Most of the fish stores around here have them now.

what does some one really gain by killing nemo like really whats wrong with people

sounds rather fishy to me. The guy'd have to target each individual system. where were the employees? When I worked at a LFS we had 3 fresh water systems, 3 saltwater systems and then a few more tanks running individually. half a water bottle into one tank? they're systems are huge!

^^^ My first thought! ^^^

+1 to that.

This sounds like the kind of dumb thing PETA might do, although I don't know how much they do in Canada. Also I think that instead of bleach they could have poured in powdered chlorine like for pools, that's very powerful stuff and a handful could easily push levels well above normal tap water which can sometimes kill marine animals.

This story is unbelievable! Some people have no respect for anything! Very sad....

why would they want to do that though? the damage done to their systems is very expensive, it will take time to re-establish systems, let alone all the money that is lost in the process. Would it really be worth it? I would guess that they would get most of the money back from the insurance but still suffer a loss.
Sounds like a lot of hassle to me to be honest

+1 for the competitors...

how was bisnuss for this store? were they making it? hmm?!?!

unless they want out. don't have to worry about selling all that livestock now. hate to be cynical but worked as an adjuster for awhile. you see some messed up...

I am suspicious of this one too. I've been to the store a few times, and it is always empty. I've literally been waiting a year for them to get everything up and running. I wouldn't be shocked if this was their way of getting out.

To give you an idea, there is a fish store right beside this place and they have been running for years. This new place has been struggling just to get their live stock up and running. I know they are big tanks but for a year just to get them stocked and or cycled? During this time they are still paying rent.

Why wouldn't they have QT'd the fish that were still living?? Or at least have removed the dead fish/shut the system down?

That sucks, and is wrong in so many ways.

The dead scorp hit a sore spot with me

To me, this seems highly suspect and sounds more like an incidence of chlorine reaching the tanks from chlorinated city water. The chlorine levels in treated city water are usually between 2000 and 3000 ppb (ug/L). Free chlorine toxicity in freshwater fish begins at around 50ppb, with 100% mortality at around 3 - 400 ppb. The report also mentions a bleach smell, which would be congruent with chlorine toxicity, as chlorine will volatilize off the water and leave chlorine vapor in the air. This is especially true of a warm humid environment (e.g. fish store).

You know, the very first thing I thought was just that. But then I thought, no way that somebody that loves fish enough to open a fish store would do that to themselves.

But the pieces don't fit. Where were the employees while this was happening ? Most of the fishroom and ALL the frag tanks are visible from the front of the store.

The freshwater system alone probably has over 3000 gallons. Would a single bottle of bleach kill everything ? Maybe the first couple of tanks, but by the time the water flowed through 5 or 6 tanks it would have been diluted. A 250 mil bottle in a 3000 gallon system is less than a 1:48000 ratio. In one of the articles they say that although customers "smelled bleach" no chemical was found. If it was strong enough to kill fish, it would show up on the MANY chlorine tests that EVERY LFS sells.

EVEN if it was a deadly ratio, they are a fish store - they sell de-chlorinator. Would no-one have thought to start dumping de-chlorinator into the system ??

Which brings me to the next and the weirdest thing, being a fish store with the "largest fish room in canada" one would expect them to have hundreds of gallons of RO/DI water and probably at least a few hundred gallons of saltwater ready and waiting for top-offs and WCs. Seeing so many fish die, my first instinct would be to grab all of my tanks in stock, fill them with water and get the fish out of the poisoned system. They claim this happened around 1 pm and at 8 pm when the news crews showed up, all the fish are in the tanks, live fish swimming around in the same tanks as dead fish - SEVEN HOURS LATER !!

From the couple of times that I went there, I didn't see the store being able to generate the kinds of profit needed to pay the expenses it would generate.

They had advertised on www.aquariumpros.ca that they were going to open up a new wall of saltwater tanks this past weekend, but from my understanding - that never came to fruition. I've also heard rumblings of financial issues. Although I have to way to know if that's based on fact or speculation.

As disgusting as this act was, if it's discovered to be an insurance scam - I don't know even know how to describe how much more disturbing it would be than if it was a deliberate or even random act.

From what I have seen on the video, Brun 129 is absolutely right. If someone poisoned the tank, any of the fish that are still alive in the tank could be saved by simply transferring them into a tank of clean water. These guys don't even seem to care about or respect fish at all, he grabs a fish that is dead and stuck to a strainer fitting, and fires it back in the tank after.. Plus any of those tap water conditioners have sodium bisulfite or something similar that binds to chlorine and makes it non-toxic. This would take most people an hour to remediate, and transfer the remaining fish into clean water.

The other alternative, is what I already mentioned. That something happened with their dechlorination system and let straight city water into their tanks. That will kill basically every kind of fish and invertebrate.

Either way, these guys are clearly dumbasses.

Hate to say it but +1 on the owner. If the smell?? is in the back room it was him or an employee, either way it was his fault for not taking security precautions. the 1 or 2 grand it would cost to atleast make it look like real security would have saved what 50,000 worth of fish.

I wonder if his insurance company even covers livestock? I know that no insurance company I talked to here would cover any fish and corals dying, only the equipment...

rightfully so.

there's got to be some kind of coverage. seems like too big a risk to make a lfs worth doing. i mean j-lo has her butt cheeks insured.

Well, I guess in some instances, but not in the case of a fire or something.

Seems like too big of a risk for an insurance company actually. How easy would it be for a fish store to make some fake receipts and claim that they had 1000 piece collection of tyree pieces and that 50% of their fish were conspic angels?

they have loss insurance, it only kicks in if the losses are really high. i looked at it before, this plan kicked in at the 90% loss mark. For major disasters and the like. It was very pricey as you can imagine, but probably good for fish farmers/breeders etc...

Would explain why they weren't exactly scrambling to save the remaining livestock

If i were those guys (owners)and found who did this.....id coat them in honey, drop them in a vat of bull ants. then as they were about to die, inject them with morphine.....so they could watch themselves get eviscerated, with a rusty butter knife.....

good lord... That's the kinda stuff I used to say when I was, I don't know, in the third grade?!?

yeah my lfs is moving and getting cameras now so that should help him out from something like this happening to him. Honestly i'm weighing more towards insurance fraud, but thats just me, and aparently some others. Its sad, but thats why we buy insurance. There are many forms of insurance as well as some have not enough insurance and some have well then enough.

But really it just smells fishy...and what goes around comes around to whoever did it.

It actually doesn't sound like PETA at all. PETA wants to push a message (right or wrong) and they have NEVER minded their name attached to the PR stunt and, in fact, probably goto great lengths to get PETA mentioned in the press. Also I can't recall a single PETA act that killed animals.

PETA euthanizes about ten times as many animals as they adopt out. Not always legally either.

You're welcome.

My spidey sense tells me this Indoor Jungle is doing an insurance scam.

If they were smelling chlorine type smell from the water then more than a cup of bleach would have had to have been dumped in their tank. In my city, when I run water I smell the chlorine smell. Really heavy from the bathtub taps, since more water comes out of there. A little water conditioner and a 2 hour wait takes care of that quickly.

What gets me is that guy is selling Endangered Species. Not cool!

But as others have stated.. no surveillance... very fishy. If I ran a store with saltwater and corals in it costing thousands of $$, I would totally be protecting my investment.

Why were there no employees around the fish tanks at the time this happened? Obviously, it would take a huge surge of water for something like this to suddenly happen.

This guys business is having financial issues... This sounds like a way for him to either get more money to remain on par with his Much Better competition, or to be able to close his business without having to claim bankruptcy loss.

I think this store owner needs to be really looked at in depth by city police instead of taking things for face value and his insurance company needs to investigate him as well.

I can imagine this guy probably saw the article regarding the fish stores in the US being robbed and thought it would be a good idea to do something to his own systems.

Because that's fraud. Doesn't mean they won't do it, but the answer to your question in a perfect world, is that it's simply illegal.

I'm sure most LFSs have addition insurance for their livestock. Especially when you have that much.

Yowza!!!

This is like the third post about this.

Its not hard. This could of happened yesterday or months ago. It only takes a penny or something that rust to kill everything off. Just throw a penny in the main tank and it will rust to pollute everything since all the tanks are connected to each other.

Well that my idea.

This thread is funny

No not really, it would take more that that.

Yeah i kinda exagerated. just a little LMFAO
but i dont think its hard to poison tanks at a LFS.

If someone bleachs a tank shouldn't there be foam forming at the overflows ?



Perhaps alittle I don't think anyone has said its hard to do it. Its the why and the how.

Why would it foam?? and im starting to think that could of been alot of free of fishes for all of us. if they wanted to go down like that.

yes, something very fishy about it.

Dechlorinator would have neutralized it in seconds! really it's that fast. I use prime to neutralize javel water that I use to clean my micron filter and I rinse it but there is always a strong javel smell. Then I use a little bit of Prime and off goes the smell in seconds. Not a trace of smell left after that and then I use it in my aquarium and no problem.

When you smell strong bleach smell and the fishes start to die off, I would think there is something quick to do..why they did not do it?

And that smell was coming from the back store where usualy it is only the employees going there? wierd wierd wierd.

You're right...this does not make one bit of sense, except for insurance claim. I mean they let the fish die??? what the heck!

Let's not blame the entire organization for two people that were turned over and criminally prosecuted. On the euthanization issue I'm sure they're just not shooting the animals randomly or abusing them. Facilities have limited space and budgets and interest from the public to adopt them. Blaming PETA for having to put the animals down is like blaming the nursing staff for everyone that dies at a hospital.

Don't get me wrong - I am no fan of PETA or some of their tactics but overall they are working in favor of the animals welfare.

Something that rust woudl not kill a tank! I know a passionate fish store owner around here who put a nail in his tanks and as it dissolve (quite fast) it provide iron to the tank and coral.

Copper would not kill that fast and it would be VERY easy to spot during maintenance and they would find it.

Again that is detectible in a test. If that would happen to me I would surely do all the tests on the water, and that include chlorine, copper, ammonia etc..all that's available.

Electricity leak could kill everything since they are all connected but then they would have surely FELT it when trying to investigate what was hapening so that's not it.