I just got back from my local(est)
LFS, and one of my favourites.
(Why I was there: I had rescued a longfinned zebra danio from a tank that was being shut down a while ago by inexperienced fish owners, and he's been in quarantine here ever since. He was literally living in a sewer -- there was a dead tankmate in the bottom of his tank that was well on its way to decomposing. True to their hardy nature, though, this little abused guy made a miraculous recovery. Apart from some redness around the gills (probably due to the
ammonia levels in their tank, which I was really too scared to measure at the time but now wish I had), he was totally fine once we got him into a nice clean tank. I've grown very attached to the little guy. However, we couldn't keep him, as he doesn't fit in with any of our tanks and frankly this guy needed more space than our
QT. So I took him to our LFS, which has a couple "adoption" tanks, and hopefully he'll go to a good home.)
While I was browsing there, I was thinking about a couple of threads about people's LFS and thought I should write one about why I actually
likeshopping at my LFS. Here are my top 10 reasons.
1) They list the water parameters of all the tanks with window writer pens on the sides of the tanks, including temp,
pH,
GH, KH, etc
2) Their tanks are pretty much all planted, most of them heavily, so fish have plenty of hiding places if they're feeling a bit stressed for whatever reason. (The silver dollars tank and a few others are exceptions (plastic instead of live), because I think they would tear them apart)
3) They list most of their fish (and all exotic ones) by their scientific names, and usually get them right. (For example, they don't sell Corydoras trilineatus as C. julii like SOME stores!) Also, they keep the names current so it's what fish are in the tank NOW, not what fish were in there last week or last month.
4) They list all their plants by their scientific names, and usually get them right
5) They have information posters around the store about how to set up an aquarium, how to acclimatize fish, etc, with good information! They have notes next to the bettas warning people that bettas prefer warm waters, and will get lethargic and may refuse food if water temp gets too low. They also have a few well-thumbed books on fish species and aquariums by their tanks in case you aren't familiar with a species, or possibly in case they need to check on a fact.
6) They have specific info next to the different fish species. For example, next to a baby pleco ... "Grows to well over 12-18 over several years, requires a very large tank"
7) They DO keep their male bettas in containers, but they are floating containers in the other freshwater tropical tanks so they're at the right temperature. Plus, I estimate the containers to be about 1L each in size, so they aren't tiny like some other stores, and usually have a live plant for cover and a nice wide surface area for gas exchange.
Also, the few bettas that were recovering from a fight (high school kids apparently came in and dumped a few bettas in the same tank a few weeks ago while the store owner was busy elsewhere in the store) had 5-10 gallon planted tanks to recover in, though these were sometimes shared with the odd snail.
And while they do sell a few fish bowls (honestly, how many stores don't though?) they tend towards very large (2+ gallons) bowls, and have NO stupid
betta hexes, etc. Also, they have a massive number of proper small aquarium kits from 2.5 - 10 gallons, as well as many larger aquariums for sale.
8 ) They don't keep their female bettas together. They keep them in individual 1-2 gallon filtered tanks ... and quite heavily planted, I should add. The little girls were a bit shy about coming up to the front and saying hi to me, but did eventually
9) While quite a few of their tanks are overstocked by "permanent home" standards, they are not grossly so, and certainly not compared to other tanks I've seen at retail stores. The
goldfish are probably the worst (aren't they always?) but the tanks are big and appear very well filtered and pretty clean. They also have screens on the top of the tanks to prevent the fish from jumping out, for those species that are so inclined.
10) And finally, they have a big sign over the cash that says something along the lines of "We reserve the right to refuse to sell you a pet unless we're convinced you'll care for it right". Not sure how many sales they actually refuse, but at the least it's a step in the right direction.
Anyway, I always like to give them some business when I can, so after dropping off the danio and sticking around until I was sure he'd be fine, I picked up some frozen bloodworms. Tonight my fish eat like kings!
Then we won't have to sit here being jealous. 
