No , I doubt it is very nice being told that you have a lot of livestock that is going to die, unsuitable for what else you have and so on. However it is the case that there are a lot of things sold that frankly are going to starve to death and these are often things that newbies like to buy. Flame scallops and feather dusters are a couple of the more obvious candidates. Both of these feed on specific sizes of planktonic material, and I can assure you that bottled phtoplankton, bottled 'marine snow' and the other things you are likely to be able to buy are simply not going to do it. These guys starving to death might not be obvious, but in a matter of time, a few months you get posts like 'the heads fallen off my featherduster what is wrong' or 'the legs have fallen off my linckia starfish'. Or my goniopora won't expand any more and the flesh is falling off it. It's not as obvious as 'I bought a copperband butterfly but it won't eat anything' but the end effect is the same.
People who keep these things a long time have large setups and big refugiums that provide the nutrition required without relying on bottled mixes and hoping for the best. These are not things I see on most peoples systems.
These things are sold because they're cheap, available on wholesalers lists, they sell easy and are perceived as easy because they don't drop dead on the spot. But long term care should be the target, and I don't think these are good creatures. And I frankly wish would research a bit more and think a bit more about what they want their tank to look like in a year or so's time before they bought stuff.
Generally I am not thrilled with a lot of the material , live or dead, sold by the big chains and frankly most lfs's. There's lots of unsuitable livestock, and tons of rubbish hardware sold by and bought by the unwitting. Marine aquaria keeping should be fun and interesting, and you shouldn't need to spend your money replacing junk hardware and dead livestock. Being a wise purchaser saves you a lot of bother and heartache, but it does require the aquarist to do some legwork and only buy responsibly. If that's too much bother for you then you probably won't spend a lot of time in the hobby frankly (probably explaining why 80% of marine tanks are setup less than a year)
