|  |  | | 
December 30th, 2009
|
| | Fish Helper
| An LFS by me (two stores) wouldn't sell fish to me until my tank was cycled. They tested the water ( API) for me until my tank was cycled being that I didn't have a test kit at the time. I was hoping to buy some danios from them about 3 weeks into my cycle but they highly recommended I just wait a couple more weeks. They've known the answer to every question I've had so far which is the complete opposite of Petco/Petsmart. There's another Pet Store near me that has a fish section as big as an LFS and they're really knowledgeable too, usually with 2+ workers solely for the fish.
I haven't had any really bad experiences with Petco/Petsmart yet other than them letting my brother buy 100 goldfish (Food for wildlife in our pond; raccoons, bullfrogs, herons, ducks, king fishers, etc.) no questions asked other than, "Do you want large or small ones?"
Last edited by cwb141; December 30th, 2009 at 12:16 AM.
Reason: They might have sold me fish, but I didn't press the issue | 
| | |
December 31st, 2009
|
| | Fish Bum
| Lucky fishes n lucky U!!  | |
| | |
December 31st, 2009
|
| | Fish Helper
| I went to Petsmart today and this lady sold a 12 year old kid a black ghost knife fish and he said that he had a 10 gallon tank. She told the kid "you know these fish grow big right?" the kid said "I wont let him grow that big" The lady said ok and gave him the fish. I thought it was the dumbest thing ever. How do you not make a fish grow? that made no sense..... | |
| | |
December 31st, 2009
|
| | Fish Helper
| Quote:
Originally Posted by mighty565  I went to Petsmart today and this lady sold a 12 year old kid a black ghost knife fish and he said that he had a 10 gallon tank. She told the kid "you know these fish grow big right?" the kid said "I wont let him grow that big" The lady said ok and gave him the fish. I thought it was the dumbest thing ever. How do you not make a fish grow? that made no sense..... | You could theoretically alter it's DNA in a way that removes the gene for growth. That would be bad though. | |
| | |
January 1st, 2010
|
| | Fish Bum
| lol ... that's funny ... the way the kid replied! | |
| | |
January 1st, 2010
|
| | Fish Mentor
| Technically, he's stunting the growth of the knife by stuffing it in such a small tank like that...but sadly, it would be too much to hope that its internal organs would stop growing, too. | |
| | |
January 1st, 2010
|
| | Fish Addict
| What area of NY is this store Gmen so I know to avoid it? | |
| | |
February 18th, 2010
|
| | Fish Bum
| wow never bying fish in your guys part of the world. i work at a pet store here in New Zealand and i had to go though 3 months of training before i could give people advice. and everytime someone comes in we have compulsory questions we have to ask like size of tank, filter, heater, tank mates, water conditions etc. and we do free water testing! | |
| | |
March 2nd, 2010
|
| | Fish Keeper
| awesome not at my lfs they dont | |
| | |
March 3rd, 2010
|
| | Fish Bum
| A few days ago I went into my local PetSmart and got SO excited to see they had Mystery snails, since I'd been looking for them forever and they had about 20 for $3 each.
... and then I looked closer and, not only was every single one of them dead, but half of them had been dead so long that pieces of flesh were starting to rot off and float away. There was one poor lonely little white cloud in there I felt so sorry for, swimming around in carcass soup...
Wouldn't be so frustrating if all the LFS around here weren't completely useless (one of them had 2 dead clown loaches in a tank, and then started lecturing ME on how I wasn't taking are of my fish properly and abusing my betta by keeping him in a 10g heated tank, where he was apparently being terrified by his bubble filter and developing a rather serious case of agoraphobia).
Last edited by loachaholic; March 3rd, 2010 at 07:18 PM.
| |
| | |
March 4th, 2010
|
| | Fish Keeper
| Twice I tried to buy a Mystery snail from Petco, only to find when I got it home, it was already dead. Further inspection of their tanks showed every snail in there was also, already dead. Fish, I understand, but snails? You really have to have terrible water conditions or care in order to kill a snail. | |
| | |
March 4th, 2010
|
| | Fish Addict
| Quote:
Originally Posted by jgon_ Twice I tried to buy a Mystery snail from Petco, only to find when I got it home, it was already dead. Further inspection of their tanks showed every snail in there was also, already dead. Fish, I understand, but snails? You really have to have terrible water conditions or care in order to kill a snail. | At the store I work at, they always seem to come in dead and maybe one or two last a few days in the tanks. Possibly between salt, and residuals from the medications used in the tank, might kill them off. I've given up, I don't carry mystery snails anymore at my store. | |
| | |
March 4th, 2010
|
| | Fish Mentor
| Quote:
Originally Posted by loachaholic then started lecturing ME on how I wasn't taking are of my fish properly and abusing my betta by keeping him in a 10g heated tank, where he was apparently being terrified by his bubble filter and developing a rather serious case of agoraphobia). | OMG, that is the funniest thing ever. Agoraphobia in a betta!
You are such a bad owner loachaholic, how dare you keep your betta in a heated, filtered, cosy 10g with all the room to swim he wants, and even some bubbles to play with. Shocking! I'll bet you feed him and clean him too. Disgusting  !
Gotta love the LFS...  | |
| | |
March 5th, 2010
|
| | Fish Keeper
| I was at walmart yesterday and peeked in on the fish section (couldn't help myself) and there was a woman there (who apparently bred bettas for 5 years) purchasing a goldfish. I was listening in on their conversation and the employee was actually trying to give her decent information instead of just getting her the fish and pushing her on her way. . .until he starts saying that goldfish are just like bettas in that they don't need any filtration  . As a goldfish owner, I couldn't believe my ears. He even said that all fish require filters EXCEPT for bettas and goldfish. Unbelievable. | |
| | |
March 13th, 2010
|
| | Fish Helper
| i just returned a guppy to the big als in kitchiner cuz it har a red spot that killed another fish in my tank a month ago. they told me it was a internal parasite. you would think they'd put it in a QT but no right back to the community tank it went to infect the rest fo the tank | |
| | |
March 15th, 2010
|
| | Fish Mentor
| Do internal parasites infect other fish? I'm guessing that either they're real ignorant OR the parasite isn't contagious. Because letting their fish die would only make them lose money, and most LFS are hung onto money (though not always the welfare of their fish). | |
| | |
March 18th, 2010
|
| | Fish Bum
| Quote:
Originally Posted by w_boughner i just returned a guppy to the big als in kitchiner cuz it har a red spot that killed another fish in my tank a month ago. they told me it was a internal parasite. you would think they'd put it in a qt but no right back to the community tank it went to infect the rest fo the tank | A while back my mom got 6 cories from her LFS, 1 was a rescue (Emerald green, full-grown and all alone with no other cories... he'd turned a bit neurotic) and 1 of the 3 Juliis was sick from the moment she brought it home- just lying on the bottom of the tank, breathing rapidly, reddened gills and hardly eating... nothing was wrong with her water, but whatever he had he didn't get over and finally she brought him back because she didn't have the heart to euthanize him herself. They told her they were going to put him in a quarantine tank upstairs and try to nurse him back to health, but next time she went he was in the sale tank, still gasping, and the next time he was gone.... so either he died, OR, they sold him AGAIN to ANOTHER person KNOWING he was sick! GAH! | |
| | |
March 18th, 2010
|
| | Fish Addict
| It's the big chains that get to me...
DO NOT get me started on Petsmart! I go to a small, really small local place now that is owned by the most knowledgeable man I think I've ever met.
Anybody who knows me on here can tell you, I HATE PETSMART! | |
| | |
March 19th, 2010
|
| | Fish Bum
| Quote:
Originally Posted by benjaminBreaker It's the big chains that get to me...
DO NOT get me started on Petsmart! I go to a small, really small local place now that is owned by the most knowledgeable man I think I've ever met.
Anybody who knows me on here can tell you, I HATE PETSMART! |
It's kind of sad, but in my city the big chain (Pets West) is one of the very few that are half-competent and have staff that actually seem to know something about fish. Still not experts, but better than the others. Of my LFS selection, one treats it's customers like garbage, one is completely retarded (aforementioned betta rant) and one sells crack out of the back. Well, then there's Petcetera which... let's not get into that XP.
Lucky for Mom she's got a great store in her town, it's actually a FISH store rather than a PET store that SELLS fish (which I do not have in my city, save for the one with the crack). | |
| | |
March 19th, 2010
|
| | Fish Addict
| Oh, I flippin' hate Petsmart. At first, all the fish I bought there got sick and died just because they have no idea how to take care of the fish while they have them, and that betta with the fungus...*shivers* I don't want to think of that anymore... 
So I swore off buying fish from there because this is right around when I found this local place, I was gonna' buy fish from there for now on.
But then I got some heaters, that broke, returned them, came back the next day and the heaters were up on display...like, for sale. I was so PO'd! They were broken, how are they going to sell broken heaters to people?
I'm just glad I got there and yelled at the manager before some poor sap came along and bought one.  | |
| | |
March 19th, 2010
|
| | Fish Mentor
| Our Petco's really nice. So is our LFS. But Petsmart...
Their employees know nothing but incorrect information, and are willing to sell sick fish. They've also got this thing where all the tanks are somewhat connected with slits in the dividers, so there's one really big filter on one end blasting water from the powerhead into the intake on the other side of the room. Which means...
First the disease-ridden water is washed from the feeder goldfish tank into the WCMM tank...
Then to the ghost shrimp...
Then to the oscars...
Then to the cons...
Then to the angelfish...
Then to the giant danios...
Then to the dragon gobies (which I'm sure are kept in freshwater)...
Then to the cory catfish...
Then to the guppies (which they say require aquarium salt)...
Then to the ADFs...
Then to the ghost catfish...
Then to the serpae tetras...
Then to the neon tetras...
Then to the black skirt tetras...
And into the oto tank where a big intake tubey whatever sucks it up, and the cycle goes on again.
GOSH! | |
| | |
March 19th, 2010
|
| | Fish Addict
| Yeah, ours is like that too...However, our Petco is okay, to say the least. And there is a PetSupermarket that isn't all to bad. Better with hamsters though. | |
| | |
March 19th, 2010
|
| | Fish Helper
| I want one of those systems so I can raise ICH. It's such a pretty white color!  | |
| | |
March 19th, 2010
|
| | Fish Mentor
| Quote:
Originally Posted by loachaholic Wouldn't be so frustrating if all the LFS around here weren't completely useless (one of them had 2 dead clown loaches in a tank, and then started lecturing ME on how I wasn't taking are of my fish properly and abusing my betta by keeping him in a 10g heated tank, where he was apparently being terrified by his bubble filter and developing a rather serious case of agoraphobia). | Yup, Loachaholic, you'd better get him a tiny, 1/2 gallon unfiltered, unheated fish bowl. Only feed him a little pinch of food twice a week.  I agree, Tigerfishy, that's hilarious.
Yeah, and I'll bet that he's not agoraphobic in those massive rice paddies his ancestors were from, too... | |
| | |
March 19th, 2010
|
| | Fish Bum
| Quote:
Originally Posted by Elodea Yup, Loachaholic, you'd better get him a tiny, 1/2 gallon unfiltered, unheated fish bowl. Only feed him a little pinch of food twice a week. I agree, Tigerfishy, that's hilarious.
Yeah, and I'll bet that he's not agoraphobic in those massive rice paddies his ancestors were from, too... | She kept going on about how they live in tiny little caves in rivers and that ANY current WHATSOEVER will scare the out of them, so filters are completely out of the question with Bettas, and that they have to be kept in little tanks because since they're from little caves all that space will, again, scare the out of them, plus she started saying how even in a big tank if the owner doesn't clean it it'll be way worse than a tiny bowl (but, duh, bigger tank doesn't mean no maintenance).
Then she started talking to this other customer about setting up their tank, and she told them that the only way to get their tank set up for the fish they want was to get goldfish and keep them in there for a week, and after that the tank would be ready for tropical fish.
Umm.. what? No mention of the nitrogen cycle whatsoever, just 'get a tank, get a filter, set it up with some goldfish and in a week you're ready for fish!'
... I can only imagine what her customers do with the goldfish when they're done with the 'cycling' process...
I really should have learned my lesson from these people when I got my rat from them. They were picking her up by her tail cause she was peeing on them, um, maybe if you weren't grabbing their tails and tossing them back in they wouldn't be scared to peeing.... just a thought... poor girl took over a month before she'd let me actually pick her up, now she's a great sweetie and guess what? She doesn't pee on people. Yup, that's right. When she's been out of her cage too long she starts getting skittish and tries to escape me to get back to it, as soon as she's in she runs to a corner and pees. Instead of, you know, being grabbed by a part of her body that can actually be TORN OFF by the weight of the rest of her dangling from it and peeing in terror. It's quite nasty, and I've seen it done before.
I really wish I could report these people to somewhere... But really, who cares about fish and snake food? They don't have feelings like real animals do, after all... | |
| | |
March 19th, 2010
|
| | Fish Addict
| Quote:
Originally Posted by loachaholic She kept going on about how they live in tiny little caves in rivers and that ANY current WHATSOEVER will scare the out of them, so filters are completely out of the question with Bettas, and that they have to be kept in little tanks because since they're from little caves all that space will, again, scare the out of them, plus she started saying how even in a big tank if the owner doesn't clean it it'll be way worse than a tiny bowl (but, duh, bigger tank doesn't mean no maintenance).
Then she started talking to this other customer about setting up their tank, and she told them that the only way to get their tank set up for the fish they want was to get goldfish and keep them in there for a week, and after that the tank would be ready for tropical fish.
Umm.. what? No mention of the Nitrogen cycle whatsoever, just 'get a tank, get a filter, set it up with some goldfish and in a week you're ready for fish!'
... I can only imagine what her customers do with the goldfish when they're done with the 'cycling' process...
I really should have learned my lesson from these people when I got my rat from them. They were picking her up by her tail cause she was peeing on them, um, maybe if you weren't grabbing their tails and tossing them back in they wouldn't be scared to peeing.... just a thought... poor girl took over a month before she'd let me actually pick her up, now she's a great sweetie and guess what? She doesn't pee on people. Yup, that's right. When she's been out of her cage too long she starts getting skittish and tries to escape me to get back to it, as soon as she's in she runs to a corner and pees. Instead of, you know, being grabbed by a part of her body that can actually be TORN OFF by the weight of the rest of her dangling from it and peeing in terror. It's quite nasty, and I've seen it done before.
I really wish I could report these people to somewhere... But really, who cares about fish and snake food? They don't have feelings like real animals do, after all... | That's awful... 
I've actually bought like 2 feeder minnows and kept them in a tank for a few weeks until it was cycled. Living fish add ammonia to the water. I wouldn't ever suggest that to a newbie, but I'm just saying it could be done.
And that junk about the betta is straight BS. I think there should be some sort of class these people should have to go to before they get hired to sell fish to people.
Terrible how they treated your rat.
EDIT: I gave the feeders to my friend that feeds them to his Oscar.
Last edited by benjaminBreaker; March 19th, 2010 at 09:45 PM.
| |
| | |
March 23rd, 2010
|
| | Fish Bum
| The closest store to me is a Pet Food Warehouse and they have about 15 bettas in cups smaller than a small takeout cup from a fast food store. None of the fish even move! And their tanks are always super crowded and they are slow to clean out the dead fish... | |
| | |
March 23rd, 2010
|
| | Fish Keeper
| Nothing I hate worse then to go into a fish store and see dead fish floating around. I turn and walk out. I own a fish store and have 9-20gal. tanks that all cycle as one. All of my tanks are crystal clear and no dead fish floating around. It's work but it can be done. These other fish store just don't take the time to keep them clean. | |
| | |
March 23rd, 2010
|
| | Fish Keeper
| Quote:
Originally Posted by benjaminBreaker That's awful...
I've actually bought like 2 feeder minnows and kept them in a tank for a few weeks until it was cycled. Living fish add ammonia to the water. I wouldn't ever suggest that to a newbie, but I'm just saying it could be done. | Yes, it can be done, but not in just a week like the worker described in loachaholics post. Also, just because it can be done doesn't mean it should be done. It's stressful on the fish and not only is not NOT for beginners, the most experienced fishkeepers tend not to do it because it's not good for the health of the fish. And even feeding fish that were kept in unhealthy conditions can even be bad for the fish that's eating it because it could spread disease. | |
| | |
March 23rd, 2010
|
| | Fish Addict
| That's what I'm saying, very bad idea for anyone, especially newbies. I only did it once, and it actually worked out great for me. My first 10 gallon before I got my platies I had those minnows in there. I'm not dumb, I would have known if those fish were sick, and I can promise you I would never let my friend feed them to his oscar if they were sick. His oscar is fine right now, so I'm guessing that there really was nothing to worry about.
He was so PO'd the other day because we went into Petsmart to get more minnows to feed his fish, and they were all sick. They had to be, there was at least 20 dead fish in there, and I'm not gonna' lie, they didn't look good at all, not sure what was wrong, but I could just feel it, the way they moved and such.
We went to this local place and decided to try some small gold feeders, but now he is even more ticked off because now they are out of feeders and aren't getting any more till next Friday. 
Sucks for him. | |
| | | | |
Similar Aquarium Fish Forum Threads 
