PB Smith, if you re-read my originally post I said you should do a sand vacuum like you said. I use several siphons you mentioned daily.
I never said you cannot run a thriving aquarium while disturbing the nutrients in the sand bed.
Compared to other 4 fish stores in the area our water is the cheapest. Sandbar charged $1.40, Oceans charged $1.30, Phil Your Aquarium Charges above $1, and we charge $1. Oceans uses Oceanic. Phil uses Ocean Pure. Sandbar and My store use Instant Ocean.
This bag costs us $48 for 200gal. We waste 2 gal for ever water. We replaced all stages of the filter several times a month to maintain 0 TDS. Charging a $1 for this is the cheapest in the area and the lowest TDS. I'd say that's a good deal if you do not want to invest in the RO system yourself.
I do not know of one store that uses Pacific Ocean water for resale? Is that a thing? That's not coral minded.
Where did I say 50% water changes are the only way to keep balance? like seriously where did I say that. $120 would be for 120 gallons of water
Also this is a thread about water changes. Can you be a contributing part of the thread instead of finding points you disagree with or find to cost too much.
If they can sell it for under .50 per gallon, no need to pay $1, is there?
This means for a 200gal box of IO salt for $48 we would make $52 before even consider wasted water, and replacing two membranes, and sediment, and media every month. Retail price for a retail store. You have to make more than even on your investments... We also use this salt for our store so technically we cannot even sell all 200g of salt. Have you thought this out? RO cost money... especially when you're producing 200g of water a day... come on man.
We are also the ONLY store locally with captive grown corals with entire frag racks full of encrusted pieces. We do not go to LA every week and re-sell corals. Our frags are captive frags from captive mother colonies. We also have legacy with named corals. Not everyone is into Tyree or Jason fox or named corals but retail customers expect a legacy and history behind some of their corals. By knowing the history and linage of the live animal you're buying you're expecting more.
The same can be said for race horses and show dogs. And many other animals.
I'm sorry you feel as we're trying to stick it to the rich man. You'd find we're considerably cheaper than the 3 surrounding stores in this zip code, and have higher quality live stock than any store along the 405 in orange county.