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Hey,

Yesterday I had a bit of a hard experience when I bought 3 yoyo loaches from a department store. I hardly ever visit their fish section as it always gets me angry to see all the dead fish they have in their tanks and the sorry state of most of the fish that are still alive. Yesterday, when I was buying some gifts to take to my relatives, I could not resist and walked over to their aquarium section. Although there still were a couple of dead fish in some of the tanks, most of the fish seemed in relatively good condition, most likely they had just restocked. When I saw they had Yoyo loaches I had to buy a couple as my normal LFS has never had them. So I asked the lady behind the counter if she could get three of them for me.

This is where it got nasty. In the tank with the loaches was a piece of bogwood, approximately 1 ft long, 5" high and wide. I'm not sure how heavy it was exactly, but I estimate it at about 1½ pounds or so. When she put the net in the tank, almsot all loaches disappeared under the wood... she got annoyed and huffed a bit, then I guess she was trying to pick up the wood, but ended up rolling it a bit on top of some of the fish... she then let go, it instantly dropped back in its previous position and then she repeated that two times more before she finally lifted it from the tank. I have no idea how many fish she hurt in the process... I felt like shouting at her at that point.

It didn't quite end there, when she had the wood out, she started trying to catch the fish, there were a few which didn't look quite as fed as the others and they didn't swim as fast, of course those were the fish she went after. I told her instantly that I didn't want those (I did feel sorry for those fish, I don't think they have much chance of living for a long time), she huffed some more and then asked in an offended tone which ones I did want. I pointed at some of the healthier colored loaches with nice healthy looking bellies, they did swim very fast and were very active. She tried to catch them but wasn't very succesful, she only used one net and the fish knew how to evade it... most of the time. every now and then she managed to corner one, which would try to push its way into the substrate, she then tried to force the poor fish upwards by pushing with the rim of the net against the side of the fish or against the substrate that the fish was trying to get into... a very damaging procedure. All in all it was terrible to behold and I just didn't know what to do or say. How do you people react when you see such a thing? I don't have the naive idea that could have educated that person, she just didn't care at all about what she was doing, the fish meant nothing to her. I'm thinking about writing a letter to the departmentstore management, though I seriously doubt that will have any effect either.

Any suggestions?

Dr Bonke...

For future reference... What I do when I come across a clerk that seems unsure of themselves is I ask them if I can catch the fish myself. It saves both the fish and I the trauma. Normally they are more than willing to let me do this.

As for writing to the head of the department store itself I would hope this would work but it did not work for me... the 1st time. My issue was the condition of the tanks. You could send a copy to the store in question and also send a copy of the letter to the department stores corporate headquarters. This did work for me. Sending a copy to the boss of the boss stating that this was my second attempt at rectifying the problem made the 1st boss alittle nervous. Not sure what ensued between the two bosses but the problem was solved.

Good Luck...

Last edited by Tammy at 13-Jan-2005 08:23