Walmart, Petco, And Petsmart

I am going to share a very sad story. I went shopping. I went to Walmart to get groceries and a few things that I needed. As always I stopped in the fish section to see the fish. I arrived in the Fish section and saw that they had got a shipment of bettas in. I was appalled. There was about 20-25 bettas, mostly crowntails and veiltails. (For those of you who do not know what a crown tail looks like I will put a picture below) The water in the tiny cups was brown with filth, old pellets lay rotting at the bottom, there was barely 1 inch of water in each cup. The beautiful crown tails were laying dejected and miserable, one, a dark blue, shining, with fins that faded into yellow (like a paradise betta) another all black, a third, orange and pink with symptoms of dropsy. I was tempted to take the bottle of "betta water" and dump it into the cups, I was so sad that I almost went to a manager, "dude take it easy" I told myself I could just barely get myself out of that section without doing something crazy. It got worse.

I finished my shopping, seething in rage, and the person I was with wanted to stop at a store next to petco. I agreed. While they were in there store, I went to petco to look at the fish hoping to find better conditions. No such luck. I looked at the angelfish tanks. Two HUGE full grown angels were in a tank barely big enough for one of them. In that tank was with them odessa barbs, otos and a few other fish. The poor angels could hardly move, they were being attacked by the school of barbs, the barbs nipped them, One poor angel was trying to get away but got stuck in a plant, the other was being sucked on my the oto, it looked at me, its eye red, it struggled to get away.

Even more disgusted I turned away.

Next I had a return at a store near petsmart, so I stopped in. Here conditions are much better, betta water is clean, fish are cared for. When looking at the bettas I got into a conversation with an elderly lady. "Betta love being in small containers." she said implying the tiny cups that they were in. "NO!" I said. "They need a 2.5 if no 5 gallon filtered aquarium." The elderly lady kept shaking her head. "but they like small aquariums" I looked at the .25 gallon aquariums. "To put a creature in one of those is cruel" I said. "But they like small aquariums." I said nothing.


The point of this post is to explain that these stores need to change there fish selling habits, at least fill the betta cup all the way! I encourage all of you to rescue a betta! Go find a beautiful dejected betta and rescue him!!

I just wanted to share this story because it was interesting and I thought maybe some of you could relate and enjoy it.

Happy fish keeping

Easton

PS

Not that I don't like walmart I love walmart and I shope there a lot! And it is not that they are selling betta fish it is that they are not CARING about the betta fish they are selling enough to keep their water clean.

 

Thanks for the story, Here in Canada fish are banned at Walmart glady but we still got Petland, Petsmart, Petvalu and other no name garbage stores. Thanks for spilling some walmart tea. Yesterday I saw a 2 week old baby crested gecko at petsmart small then a milk lid. Its head barely the size of my finger nail. I want to save it but even then it would be to stressed out and die. Poor animals!
Edit: Careful with those photos or the copyright rules will play and the admins will come after you. lol They will take em down probably, next to take some photos of these poor fish. I always do on my Instagram, We have one pet store in our mall selling dogs

 

Here we do have some good fish stores, petsmart does a pretty good job, it's tanks are clean and the bettas cared fore

 

Yes, many big chain pet stores keep not just the fish, but almost all of their animals in deplorable conditions. The best hope they have is if the employees actually know what they're doing, and give the animals the best they can with what they have to work with.

As for buying bettas from the stores.. it's pretty contreversial as I've learned, but I have to say that buying the bettas, though it gives them a good life, also gives the company more incentive to continue the practice of keeping the animals in poor conditions. I know my betta Sean Bean came from petsmart, but I won't let myself fall for it again, I can't support a company that treats the majority of their animals like something other than a creature that needs the best possible care.

 

I’ll be honest. Stuff like this doesn’t even register in my radar. There are bigger, more serious issues I’d rather devote my time, my emotion, and my energy on.

 

My Petsmart isn't that bad. I don't usually get fish from there, but I made an exception for my little boy Flappy. He's a longfin zebra danio and he was in a tank by himself. I'm guessing someone bought the others with him and he was left alone. I got him and the three standard fin zebras they had and filled out the school with five more from my lfs. All nine are happy and healthy and are going into a 45 g once they finish quarantine. I'm not worried about how my Petsmart's fish are being cared in the store as much as who they're being sold to. They don't really know anything and they don't ask any questions about the tank. They don't seem to care about their fish.

 

Yes, petstores and Walmart’s can be very cruel. Why I don’t support them by purchasing anything live or any fish products at Walmart.

I agree with asona, your only supporting them if you “rescue” a fish from them. They don’t see what they did wrong and why you bought the fish, nor do they care. Money is what they want and it’s what they get from mistreating fish. Getting it either from those who have compassion and are appalled or by those who don’t understand and just want a fish. Because of this they of course will replace whatever dish you get and try to get another sale by treating them the same way because it works. So if you “rescue” one, you are surely condemning another. Even though the intentions are good, it doesn’t mean that the outcome will not be negative.

It’s much better to support those that actually care for the fish. Buying from breeders is typically better. One of the breeders I’ve purchased from certainly cared a great deal more than any Walmart or petstore. He went out of his way to make sure his fish was ok, something a pet store would likely never do for various reasons.

 

Depends on the individual stores. Around here, the best is Petco, then Walmart, then Petsmart, in that order as far as the overall looking health and conditions of their fish.

 

Bump. People need to see this.

 

I agree its very inhumane,there living creatures and deserve to be kept in humane conditions,I noticed that also in some stores,I feel sorry for them ,that's why the more people say something about how they keep them,the more they'll realize they should do something about it or people won't shop there anymore,I know betta fish like small spaces ,but not that small be for real,I always think fish should have space to swim and never be crammed in inadequate space.

 

The big chains around where I live are verrry 2 sided. It's due to the employees coming and going, and that causes the quality for the animals to change often. Even the stores' quality varies greatly from one side of the town to the other. This week, it seems they're usually good.

If it weren't for my tarantulas, I wouldn't even buy the crickets from them, but the crickets are usually fine.

 

If you think you are helping the situation by rescuing betta fish from a bad environment of a crappy store, you are becoming part of the overall problem. The only way to get this to stop is to vote with your money and never buy a fish from a store that mistreats them. A store like Walmart only keeps what makes them money, if fish stop making money for the store, they will stop having them in the store. Or, make it so much trouble financially, socially, or physically for them to keep the animal that it's not worth their time. Buying a fish or any sort of supplies from Walmart only exacerbates the larger issue.

 

If you think you are helping the situation by rescuing betta fish from a bad environment of a crappy store, you are becoming part of the overall problem. The only way to get this to stop is to vote with your money and never buy a fish from a store that mistreats them. A store like Walmart only keeps what makes them money, if fish stop making money for the store, they will stop having them in the store. Or, make it so much trouble financially, socially, or physically for them to keep the animal that it's not worth their time. Buying a fish or any sort of supplies from Walmart only exacerbates the larger issue.

Amen to that.

 

I consider myself lucky that the walmarts near me got rid of their fish sections years ago the Petsmart is above average in their care even though the Betta are still in cups they are full and on multiple occasions I've gone in as an employee was doing water changes on the cups, The Petco isn't as good as Petsmart but the guy in charge of the fish actually knows how care for fish who tries to better their care as much as he can while not getting in hot water with corporate.

 

In San Diego, Petsmart pretty much abuses their fish. I've seen tanks of tetras with multiple dead fish in there and employees don't seem to care. It's really sad and I'll never shop for fish there. Some Petcos have great selections. The one is Escondido is amazing, has a good selection, and takes great care of their fish. Others are as bad as Petsmart.

If anyone reading this lives in SD and needs a place to buy HEALTHY and well treated fish, go to Shipwreck Cove, Pet Kingdom, or the Petco in Escondido right off the 15.

 

I have seen way too much of this to really make a big deal out of it, it's too common nowadays.
Although, if someone was saying something significantly incorrect about a certain fish, educating them would be something to do.
I do agree with scarface though.

 

In San Diego, Petsmart pretty much abuses their fish. I've seen tanks of tetras with multiple dead fish in there and employees don't seem to care. It's really sad and I'll never shop for fish there. Some Petcos have great selections. The one is Escondido is amazing, has a good selection, and takes great care of their fish. Others are as bad as Petsmart.

If anyone reading this lives in SD and needs a place to buy HEALTHY and well treated fish, go to Shipwreck Cove, Pet Kingdom, or the Petco in Escondido right off the 15.

Ugh I'm stuck in the AV, there's just 2 LFSs near me that aren't petsmart/co, wish I lived south of the san gabriel mtns.ead:

 

petco where I live takes very good care of all their animals, can't speak for the others because I don't visit them. The thing with our petco is the fact that I know more about their pets then they do. I understand these are just high school kids or college students trying to make a buck to get themselves through school but these big chains need to realize that their customers come for sales and service. They need to educate their employees much much better. A big poster identical different plants at the time clock or a simple pamphlet outlining certain parameter would go along way for a beginner.

 

My PetSmart has a Betta dragon you can't even go near the bettas without her attacking yo and going off on a rant about how you need to properly keep bettas. Honestly though, it's way too much that it makes me not want to go near the fish section! PetCo is okay. They have some bad looking bettas, but I know the kid who runs the fish section is a fish person and has bettas so he probably takes good care of them. I only ever bough one non-betta from PetCo, as they usually don't have fish in their tanks, and it has been alive and doing so much better than the fish that bought at my LFS. None of the WalMarts sell fish by me. TBH I think that they chainstores have better betta fish care than the two LFS and one of the LFS is freaking amazing, but they have their bettas in such tiny cups.

 

The big box stores are completely hit and miss as far as their employees go, there's some that are knowledgeable and go as far as asking what size tank I have. Then there's others who could care less.