[abcha0s]

An interesting question. Interesting responses to the question as well. There should be interest in such a service. However, you should be cautious in considering this.

Where are you? Your profile doesn't say.

There are two types in this hobby. Those that aspire to desease eradication and those that don't believe it's possible. Unfortunately, neither will be interested in your services.

Those that don't believe it is possible, or at least are at the point where it is too late and they are already managing desease, represent the vast majority of hobbyists. Let's say 90%. This group will pay for a "tank conditioned" fish that looks healthy and is eating but they really don't care if it "might" have ich because all of their fish already have ich. What difference does it make? They might pay a few dollars extra to avoid velvet, but I doubt it.

The other 10%...those that aspire to desease eradication... are already there. Most of this group got there on their own. This group is represented by advanced hobbyists that have had a major set back due to desease and have rebooted their tanks in one way or another with the intent to erradicate desease. I'm in this camp.

Here's why your idea won't work and I would caution you to shift your thinking around this. Imagine I have $10k of fish in my tank and it is really and truly a desease free tank. Do you think there is any way that I would buy a "quarantined" fish and drop it in? No way. Not in a million years. I got here on my own and I'm not going to trust my entire tank to anyone else's "protocol".

What would your liability be if something got through and now I have desease in my tank? I might buy from a qt vendor if they put up a $100k guarantee. Otherwise, I would never risk it.

You might find a niche market amongst those with a new tank that buy all of their fish from you, but if you are not also selling QTed inverts and corals then there is little point. They will introduce desease to their tanks one way or another. It only works if you go all in. Always and every time.

I generally believe that "there is ick in every tank" except where you can trace the history and introduction of every living thing (everything wet even if it's not living) in that tank and can be certain that the QT protocol was not just followed but also that it was effective. It is possible to have a desease free tank. Mine is. Not all tanks have ich.

I believe that the industry itself needs to shift and stop selling contaminated livestock. We might get there one day, but there's a long road ahead of us.

The fact that you can no longer buy fish meds in Canada is disheartening. It really kills the concept of the ethical hobbyist. I'm not sure that you can call it ethical when you buy fish that have a high probability of carrying a desease but you can't access the meds to treat? That's a separate issue I guess. It is still possible to source the meds if you are resourceful and have the means but you need to stock them in advance as you won't be able to get them quickly enough if there is any urgency.

I disagree on the point of this "not being hard". It is hard. It's dam near impossible. Cross contamination is a very real risk and near everything that you do with water increases the risk of cross contamination. Ich floats through the air between tanks. It can get in your water mixer. It can transfer on your hand, on a brush, or just from water left in your sink.

You could have your entire setup completely ich free and then buy one snail with a hitchhiker tomont. You understand qt protocols so the snail goes in your invert qt. All good until that tomont becomes 100 theronts. Now there is a serious risk of cross contamination. Even if your tanks are sufficiently far apart (10 feet) there are a hundred other ways that you could cross contaminate and now you are back to square one. Or in your case you just caused a customer to introduce a parasite into their otherwise desease free tank. Bad for you. Worse for them. It's not a good idea.

The business model can work at scale but not at the hobbyist level. You need to run this with a "probably desease free" disclaimer for a number of years and prove you can do this before switching to a "definitely desease free" claim.

There is one model that might work and I would be interested in. A network of like minded qt hobbyists that share resources. There is already a thriving community of these people that are sharing experience and ideas. You can find me there. But I haven't found a network of these people in Canada yet. Perhaps it's there and I just haven't gone far enough down the rabbit hole to find it yet. If anyone knows of such a thing or is interested in starting one, then we should talk.

I'd like to hear more about what your doing and what led you to start this thread. You are definitely on to something. I just don't think that you should try to monitize this and doing it as a favor is a recipe for disaster on both sides of the exchange.

Just my thoughts

Brad