For Any Petco Employees

I just have a quick question if there are any Petco employees on here, does Petco have a protocol if you have fish that are not labeled and none of the employees on the clock know what fish it is? I'm just curious...

 

They would know what they ordered. It'd be written on the bags

 

That's actually an interesting question. My local petsmart has started to keep a tank that is just labeled "Mystery Fish." The employees say they have no ideal what type of fish they are. The tank has more then one fish that is a different fish from the rest too.

 

Mine were just too dumb to know that was a dwarf puffer and not a cute smaller molly in the tank.

 

They would know what they ordered. It'd be written on the bags

A lot of times when you are buying in bulk from a large distributor, you will get hitchhikers in the bags. I have often seen mislabeled fish in tanks at Box Stores. And at times they literally have no idea what fish they are. The other week I was at Petsmart and a costumer was trying to buy a Rainbow cichlid and ended up with a Salvini. Know one seemed to know what a SalvinI even was, let alone what to charge for it. They gave it to the costumer for the price of a Rainbow.

 

That's pretty much what happened to me. I lost my male gourami and went in the buy a honey gourami but there was no tag and 2 employees started arguing between if it was a cichlid or platy. I know for a fact it was neither so they decided not to sell it to me at all. I thought that was wrong since it wasn't my fault that they didn't have it marked. I was just curious.

 

If it's not labeled it's considered a pest at my petco. All pests are free!

My petsmart has a log of what is in Stock and what is on order. My petco has smart people so they are usually good except the molly that flooded the system with fry. They managed to trap all the fry in one tank finally.

That being said there are non aquatics that misplace things. Like the big crayfish they put in with a big crayfish. I thought it odd to waste 20 bucks that way and the aquatics guy was really frustrated.

 

I just have a quick question if there are any Petco employees on here, does Petco have a protocol if you have fish that are not labeled and none of the employees on the clock know what fish it is? I'm just curious...

The year I worked at Petco we never had fish unlabeled when they were ordered. It was out of my reach to know what shipment of fish we'd receive but it was your typical fish you'd see at any pet store. I do want to note that the Petco I worked at ordered fish from liveaquaria a reputable online retailer but they were never quarantined and always added the bag water into the tanks, that was the water change as far as I'm concerned. I or any other employees were never tasked to do water changes. Water conditions were horrible ammonia spikes along with nitrites and nitrates. All the tanks were hooked onto a single sump. As much as I suggested to the management that sick fish should be pulled out of the tank and treated they really didn't care until they had a huge ich outbreak, it nearly wiped out half the livestock they had. Luckily I was able to work out a deal with management, since I was skilled in the hobby they allowed to take a few of the sick fish and since at the time I was in saltwater, they let me take some fish like snow onyx clowns, a yellow tang, some damsels and a niger triggerfish. I had to pay for the fish upfront but once cured I'd get a full refund regardless of the 14-day refund they offered or bring them dead and still get my money back. Sadly a few damsels, the yellow tang and one snow onyx died, it hurted me to lose a clown because it was a pair and so expensive $99 for both. The things I do for the hobby.

 

I have talked to employees about their naming process, and what they always say is that they name the fish according to eat their vendor says. So, if they have a misnamed fish, it's most likely mislabeled from the vendor

 

When we get fish delivered, if there is not a tag for it, I immediately call the manager to print out a label for it. As long as I've been the aquatics specialist there (which, admittedly hasn't been that long so far), we have not had a mis-shipped fish.

The only time we had a problem was when someone surrendered a fish and called it a dojo loach, and the person who accepted it just put it in with the other loaches. Well, when I came in the next morning, there were no loaches in that tank, and a very happy bichir swimming around. (he got adopted that day).

When one of the associates don't know what a fish is, they either find me or the small animal companion manager (also, two of the other workers there have been aquatics specialists at one point or another before moving up the food chain). If we can't figure out what it is, google helps us a lot ^.^