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They even had ottos? Wierd, I've only ever seen ottos in fish-only stores (and in my own tank, of course)

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Yup, I will often shop at Big Als, they are a huge warehouse size fish only store. A bit pricey, but they do carry fish there that I can't get through work... (ie saltwater). Beautiful display tanks, too... With a huge (90+gallon?) discus/rummy nose/endler planted tank.

I'm so adjective, I verb nouns!

which I detest and only prefer small, fish only stores

Does anyone have a LFS that is a LARGE fish only store? There is one where I live that is great, they have fish seperated by region (africa, central america, etc) and they have rows and rows of well-kept tanks. And it IS a chain store, but its fish only.

I'm gonna have to agree with tribblehappy on this one. I also work at a chain store and I know that the managers are very intent on keeping all of our livestock, fish and animals, in the best health we can. In talking to my manager, I discovered that our filtration system alone cost over $100,000. All of our tanks are very healthy and we have quarantine tanks running in the back in case we get really sick fish (they have independent filters). I know that there are stores out there in our chain that do not take proper care of their fish, and I wish I could change that. Unfortunately it's the people running the store that decide the fate of the fish and not everyone cares for them like we do.

[span class="edited"][Edited by 2004-08-11 20:52][/span]

Yeah. The UV sterilizers do help a lot. Our goldfish system, however, consistently breaks out with ick.

I work at the local chain petstore. We have 120 tanks all hooked up to the same system. We never, repeat never, have diseases spread from one tank to another (the 12 UV sterilizers DO make sure of that, trust me). And while I would love to have individual systems so that we could carry discus for example, we don't, and I live with it. If we have sick fish, we try to take them out; however (and I know a lot of people are going to argue this) often leaving them in the tank for two days kills off whatever ails them, ie ich does not last long in our system at all. Please do not assume that chain stores hire uneducated nincompoops. While it is true that I do not know everything (and it gives me great joy to speak with a customer who can educate me and knows more than me) I have probably forgotten more than most of my customers will ever bother to learn. I love my job, but honestly people: If you had 120 tanks you would lose a few fish too. We have to keep them crowded; we only get weekly shipments, so if we sell out of neon tetras the day after a shipment we are losing a large amount of money in potential sales. You want to know exactly what goes on behind the scenes, just ask, I'm more than happy to defend my workplace (even on days where the beaurocracy gets me uber angry).

I'm so adjective, I verb nouns!

There is exactly one pet store within an hour of me that does not have central filtration. . . each tank has its own one or two corner filters. The drawback is that most fish are 300% more than at any other store, and aren't in much better shape.

what gets me is that most stores are keeping not just one tank, but MULTIPLE tanks on the same filtration system, and just throwing new shipments of fish in right now. Move around high volumes of fish around from multiple supplies and guess what? disease spreads through the tanks quite easily. The best thing I've seen done is setting up quarentine tanks and keeping the fish seperate for a week or two after it comes in from the supplier, before putting them out. Personaly I think the best thing to do when found in a deadbeat LFS is to tell them what happens when fish are kept like this, describe each disease in detail (especialy if you see some neon tetra disease; describe the bursting cysts) and do it right in front of customers.

I see otos in every chain pet store here. Actually they are everywhere . Dojos however are impossible to find and I finally gave it up. Most stores are ok here about fish even walmart. They are guilty of overcrowding tanks but otherwise the tanks are kept pretty clean and I have yet to see sick fish at a store.

Okay, so I went to an unnamed pet store and I saw the saddest thing in my life. On top of having an entire tank full of dead plecos (belly up on the bottom of the tank in a "manager's special tank" I found 3 dojos (my personal favorite fish) in an overcrowded tank with 9 huge gold fish. One of the dojos was laying dead on the ground and appeared to have been dead for a very long time while his two buddies were laying right next to him. On closer inspection I noticed that one had ich and the goldfish were slowly spitting rocks at him and we wasn't even moving to try to get away! I turned around to go get a worker and noticed not one, not two, but three workers all sitting around talking instead of taking care of the fish. Needless to say, I gave them a piece of mind and made sure they took the dead one out and medicated the others. I wanted to take the two live ones soooo bad, but I don't have room for them in my tank. It's just soooo sad to see fish mistreated like that.]:|

I went to a chain LPS (which I detest and only prefer small, fish only stores) almost a week ago and saw two tanks full of dead Otos and some other Cories! The water was green and murky and wow, what a sad sight it was.

I just gave an lfs a piece of my mind for similar reasons, sending email to call me so I can let them know how I feel over their fantastic treatment of fish.
Every tank is hooked up to the same sump, so basically there are 18 small tanks of mismatched fish all covered in Ich. Oskers laying on their sides hovering but not moving, looking like they're waiting to die. Various other ones rubbing up and down all over the sides of thier tanks. Employees saying that 'yeah, we treat 'em'. thinking that a little medication (malachite green) with UV and active carbon filtering would work, with the filtering shut off for 10min 2x a day.
So many stores that have aquatics sections hire cheap, unknowledgable labor.

*edit...please do not use the names of the store for legal reasona. Thanks.

[span class="edited"][Edited by jason_r_s 2004-08-10 04:14][/span]

Okay, so I couldn't leave the dojos there. I went back the next day to get the two live ones (good excuse to get a bigger tank when they got bigger ). One was already dead but had been taken out of the tank. The one still there had gotten ich over the night, but I got him and the medication. He's in quaranteen right now receiving the meds and hopefully he will get better. I also looked at the other tanks just to see if they had listened to my griping the day before and...the entire tank of plecos was gone, all the dead fish were out of the other tanks, and all of the tanks even had a new piece of fruit for the fish to nibble on. It was amazing! The girl working was super nice and super knowledgeable too...just goes to show you that there are some people at chain stores who know a bit about fish!!

At my LFS, we get a lot of dead ones whenever we get a new shipment. For example, in a 29 gallon we had maybe 50-60 swordtails and every hour about 10 would die. They had bad velvet when they arrived though. We do 33% water changes every two days, so I don't think there were any ammonia spikes or anything.

However, if there's a whole bunch of dead plecos, the employees should've taken them out.

What I really love is when the staff tries to send your new fish home in a big happy bagfull of all that toxic, diseased water. Gee...thanks...but no thanks

it really sucks to see that kind of stuff happen, but there is really nuthing you can do abou it. Just think of how many fish die a day from bad care at pet stores. you would think the owners would want to try everything possible to keep the fish alive so they dont loose money when they die, but most dont!

-jim

don't forget that there are bad and good petstores and just b/c if it is like a petco etc. doesn't mean that all of them are bad. anyway most of the bad ones aren't in for the fish well being but for money.