LiveAquaria.com Sponsorship

tonmo

Cthulhu
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I'm pleased to announce TONMO.com's partnership with LiveAquaria.com. If you are a customer of theirs, please use a link from TONMO.com (i.e., at the top of the page). If you are not a customer of theirs, please consider their products!

I've done a search on past LiveAquaria discussions in our forums, and there is one incident of them selling mimics, but then responding responsibly to input from our community and removing the mimic promotion accordingly.

Drs. Foster & Smith are also sponsors, and you will see their ad on the right margin of the TONMO.com homepage (under the Birthdays / Buddy List sections).

I know we have customers of LiveAquaria.com and Drs. Foster & Smith within our community, and so I'm proud to add them as a sponsor to our site. Please bear with me with regard to site and advertisement layout as I look to optimize the overall look and feel of TONMO.com.

Thank you for your support!
 
I hope they're OK being associated with pictures of rotting whale guts... :roll:
 
I love LiveAquaria.com, lots of info on just about any kind of fish available in the trade.

I noticed a while back they had Mimics listed and I also noticed recently they were removed. Good for them. And good for TONMO!
 
custom tanks?

Wouldn't it be great if our sponsors decided to start selling a tank model that has extra filtration and escape-proofing from the factory so it would be well-suited to cephs "out of the box"? (hint, hint)
 
DHyslop;83910 said:
Keeping cephs is a bit advanced, it might not be the wise to make a proper setup too easy.

While I completely see your point, and agree, maybe it would mean less casualties for the less knowledgable/capable people who are going to get a ceph anyway. Just a thought.
 
Sure, but, for example, since I'm wanting to learn enough to keep a ceph, and I'd like to encourage the new sponsors by buying a tank from them, but (at least to my untrained eye) the tanks they sell seem to be "everything you need for a reef tank" bundles, where I suspect if I ordered from them, I'd have to augment or replace some of the filtration. And presumably there are some advanced ceph keepers who might like the convenience of not doing everything from scratch (believe it or not, Dan, some of those people may actually exist...) But I certainly agree that such a thing should not be labled "even a novice can keep a healthy octopus with our model 75-ceph" or anything... But having a company that sells tanks that are drilled/slotted and pre-octo-proofed seems like it might save some people from learning the ways of diamond-tipped hole saws and complicated window screen arrangements and such... Is that really such a bad thing?

It also might cut down on the people who ask "is this absurd configuration ok for an octo" or "I just bought an octo for my teeny-tiny tank" if it comes up in searches when people are researching an octo tank. Of course, ideally, they'd find TONMO.com first, but some people search for places that sell things instead of for information...
 
I have never bought from Live Aquaria, but I do buy from Drs. Foster and Smith. Request their paper catalog, it's absolutely full of stuff and more fun to look at than going through web pages. Then you can order online by going through the TONMO.com link.

One item they sell is an aquarium mat (even comes in different colors) which helps make water changes and tank maintenance easier. I love mine and I thinking of getting a second one.

Nancy
 
monty;83915 said:
Sure, but, for example, since I'm wanting to learn enough to keep a ceph, and I'd like to encourage the new sponsors by buying a tank from them, but (at least to my untrained eye) the tanks they sell seem to be "everything you need for a reef tank" bundles, where I suspect if I ordered from them, I'd have to augment or replace some of the filtration. And presumably there are some advanced ceph keepers who might like the convenience of not doing everything from scratch (believe it or not, Dan, some of those people may actually exist...) But I certainly agree that such a thing should not be labled "even a novice can keep a healthy octopus with our model 75-ceph" or anything... But having a company that sells tanks that are drilled/slotted and pre-octo-proofed seems like it might save some people from learning the ways of diamond-tipped hole saws and complicated window screen arrangements and such... Is that really such a bad thing?

It also might cut down on the people who ask "is this absurd configuration ok for an octo" or "I just bought an octo for my teeny-tiny tank" if it comes up in searches when people are researching an octo tank. Of course, ideally, they'd find TONMO.com first, but some people search for places that sell things instead of for information...

To some extent we've discussed having a "standardized setup" where newbies can be told to buy x, y and z ingredients to have a successful ceph tank. I think we haven't gone for that in the past because when you get in a certain class of equipment (wet/dry filters, $150-200 skimmers) you have a lot of different choices that are all very solid and there are few criteria to recommend one product over another--finding that equipment is the easy part, IMO.

The tough part is the aquarium and the overflow; and I don't think it would be practical for F&S to make a plug & play ceph tank. People rarely ship aquariums except when they're having a custom built one: on the good doctors' website, the shipping charge for most of their full-size tanks is $500. On top of this they appear to charge typical hourly service rates for custom mods--their custom tanks or stands cost about double to triple what the stock system might cost. In the end, the special TONMO system might cost the consumer $1500-2500. Now, I want to support the site as much as the next guy, but I'd just assume pick up a tank locally for $300, ziptie some window screen on it and then send Tony a check for a cool grand or two :smile: Suffice it to say, I think there are few people whose aversion to DIY is that strong.

Like I said in another thread, some beginners are up to it and others aren't. I'm not saying in any way shape or form that you have to do the kind of glass surgery I did in order to keep a ceph. What I fear is there are many who don't take the responsibility seriously. I'm not completely averse to having standardized components with F&S, but if we do we should consciously think about how we can do it so we aren't encouraging people who aren't ready for it. And there is such a thing as not being ready--if you have a flood or an ink event at 3 AM you can't always count on someone being online to answer your question and save your animal's life.

Dan
 
Yeah, I was rather daunted by the shipping costs, too. I was just also struck by someone in the past few days saying they'd ordered a tank from glasscages, and wasn't sure how to best modify it for a ceph... maybe providing an "all in one" system is going too far, but having a tank design that's plumbed for cephs, including escape-proofing and whatnot, seems good, particularly since so many tanks seem customized for reefers. When I was looking at the Drs F&S aquariums, it sounds like their tanks come with all sorts of stuff, but I suspect that the filtration isn't enough for ceph bioload, and it's not clear from the web site if they're plumbed in a way that's easy to add or modify...

Maybe I'm just being naive, since I'm only looking at starting a real tank, so I haven't comparison shopped enough to really know the economics... I just figured I'd like to reward their TONMO sponsorship by investigating buying a tank from them, if it's not financially crazy...
 

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