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I've refused to sell many fish to customers. Once I had to tell my manager to tell a customer that they simply cannot add 6 tinfoil barbs to a 10 gallon aquarium.

Once I had to tell my manager to tell a customer that they simply cannot add 6 tinfoil barbs to a 10 gallon aquarium.

Manager? You should take over hiring and training. You sound like you should start by educating the manager a bit. You are doing a good job!

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~~~ My fish blow kisses at me all day long ~~~

I often get "Why don't you keep colorful fish?"


Also the ever-amusing: "Why are there shells in that tank?" (said by people who've heard me talking about shelldwellers all too often, in their opinions ... I'm always impressed by the number of people who hear shelldwelling cichlids and despite understanding both words still think I'm talking about oysters or something similarly immobile).

-Molly
Visit shelldwellers.com!

Once, a customer asked me which ones were the fish.

Dumb things said by people without fish, or in this case said by people WITH fish...

A direct quote from chat today from a regular...

"well...I suppose you could flush them, or see if they will be eaten? My mollies' fry dont ever survive long in my tank"

Flush them? Poor babies!

Actually, probably the best thing I've seen was a person, who had obviously never kept fish before, walk up to the attendant in the LFS and ask "Yeah...uh...do you have any fish like the pirahna? Yeah, I want some pirahnas." The LFS person patiently took him over to the tank with the pirahnas, to which the kid exclaimed "40 bucks? How can you want 40 bucks for a fish?" and walked out of the store. The LFS worker (who I am good friends with) and I had a chuckle about that because it was obvious the kid (who couldn't have been more than 14 or so) just wanted the fish to impress his friends.

Joe Potato

"Why do you buy so many garbage fish?"

You ignorant fools, catfish are not garbage fish. Go play with a food processor, kthnxbai.

The ones I hate the most are people who assume fish are nothing more than pretty moving art. "Oh, a fish died? So what, buy another! Replace it!" Right, would they say that to someone whose dog just died? "It's okay, just replace Fido! You'll never know the difference!"

Or the people who think you're insane because you have multiple tanks. Or keep finding bettas that... follow you home... "Why do you need another fish?" "I don't need him... he needs me! "

Or the people who think goldfish belong in bowls, because, after all, they're called "goldfish bowls"!

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

or when people say that you are a psyco because the only you some how always talk about your fish in any convesation

chris

i like it when ppl get freaked out by my piranhas, for some reason they think there going to jump out n eat them

they also say im crazy for putting my handsin the tank

but i here "why so many tanks" alot because i have 7 tanks jsut in my room

Oh yes. Quite a few familiar ones here. The goldfish in bowls one being a perennial irritant.

Then of course there's the "Oh, get some catfish, they'll eat all the poo". Er, NO, Catfish do not eat poo ... as I said in my "Newcomers To Corys" topic, they appreciate prime fish food as much as any other fish. I bet if some of the dorks who say this were given a choice between finding their next lunch out of someone else's garbage can, and enjoying an all-expenses slap-up banquet at the Savoy Hotel with lobster thermidor and champagne paid for by someone else, they'd choose the latter. Ditto the Corys. If I expected my Pandas to live off garbage, I'd have dead Pandas in a pretty short space of time.



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

"Just flush it," seems to be everyone in my family's reaction when I say I need a new home for a certain fish. It's quite irritating.

It's not possible for any of me or my sister's friends to come over and not beg to catch the fish with nets. I really don't understand the fascination with wanting to net the fish... Even the vegetarians, who are supposedly against animal cruelty, want to do it.

---

I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Sure, you want to put 3 bettas in a 2 gallon tank, go ahead

A pleco won't outgrow a 5 gallon tank

Gouramis never fight

Now, buying a 5 gallon tank is an important stepping point in your life, it's a very big tank and takes alot of care and responibility

me: please don't tap on the glass

person without fish: why? they don't have ears. it won't hurt them.

Betahex, that one riles me.

To the point where I am tempted to demonstrate how it feels to the fish ... by bludgeoning said ignoramus with a 28 lb mallet ]

Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

What do you mean you're getting another tank, don't you already have enough?

And of course the one I heard last week:

How can you get so attached, it's just a fish, it's not like a dog or something...

Yeh, right...you've obviously never had any fish have you?

:88)

"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom." Thomas Carlyle

"Your tank is so clear. Do you clean it or do you have a filter"

Answer is:
Both. I have a filter and I clean it. Amazing concept to some.

Since when does having a filter mean you wouldn't have to clean the tank? Wouldn't that be like having a cat and not feeding it, just expecting it to catch food? That would be STUPID and you wouldn't believe the petshop if they told you that so why would people believe that a filter means you don't have to clean the tank. (wishful thinking due to laziness I guess)

People say some dumb things don't they?

What stupid things have people said about your tanks?/pets?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~ My fish blow kisses at me all day long ~~~

well, he could have really impressed his friends by shelling out $40 for "just a fish"

one i get from mrs moondog all the time: why do you need a bigger tank? your fish are doing fine in the tanks you have yeah, my common pleco will last forever in my 50g. she has finally seen the error of her ways when he came out and looked her right in the eye one night and then turned around leaving a trail of flying poo. she was like "wow, he's pretty big and he makes a HUGE mess." i said "yeah, that's why he needs a bigger tank, cause his mess is too much for this one".

---

"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman

'I don't care that the five rainbow sharks will fight with each other, I want them to die eventually anyways.'

'I need a pleco for my tank because my friend said so. They said I needed it to eat the algae'
Me- How large is your tank?
'Ten gallons.'
Me- Well, they will definitely outgrow that size tank, but I can recommend a couple of other algae eaters for it. Oh, do you know what kind of algae you have?
'Um, I don't have any algae.'

After I explain that people should actually research what they want to buy, and plan their tank out-
'Why go through all that planning just for some fish? Just dump 'em in, if they die, they die.'

---

And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

I find it interesting how everyone starting out seems to think they NEED an algae eater of some kind...but, I dunno...I have several tanks with no algae eaters at all, and no algae...

Oh yes, and one more incident I remembered, as said by my lovely sister:
"Steph, help! My cichlids are beating the crap out of my goldfish!"
Apparently she had to buy the goldfish so her little monster (aka son) would stop his whining.

Last edited by smantzer at 07-Mar-2005 00:24

"Fish are hard to take care of, I don't want to waste the time..."

Customer: "My tank is doing fine without water changes."
Me: "How old is your tank?"
Customer: "About 3 or 4 years old"
M "Really? And what kind of fish do you keep?"
C "Oh, depends. My fish just all die and I get new ones after that!"
Me:

"It wont live long anyway"

"I want something easy to take care of, like a goldfish"

"the guy at the fish store said I could have 2 dwarf gouramis, 7 serpae tetras, 2 common plecos and 1 panda cory in my 12 gal"

"the Betta likes his water dirty" after not changing it for 3 months.

As I'm peering in the tank through the green algae bloom "the guy at the store said all these fish would be okay in my 10 gal." I never did figure out exactly what was in the tank, it was hard to tell from just an occasional swim by.

---

I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
~ Mae West

From the oust commercial that shows a 29 gal with 3 very large goldfish

I keep one here because I don't like the fishy odors

Well why dont' you go dig a pond you ignorant fool, goldfish don't belong inside ]:|

^_^
[hr width='40%']"There’s an emptiness inside her. And she’d do anything to fill it in.
And though it’s red blood bleeding from her now. It's more like cold blue ice in her heart.
She feels like kicking out all the windows. And setting fire to this life."[/font]

here's another one that bugs me...

"why do i need such a big tank? fish only grow to the size of the tank they're kept in."

Oh yes. People who want to keep piranhas so that they can pose as 'hard' before their chav mates. ]:|]]:|]]:|

And the guy who wanted me to fix his Festering Aquarium Of Doom™. The one with the Pangasius cats in it. Which smelt like a blocked drain when I lifted the lid.

There are some complete twonks on this planet, aren't there? :%)

Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

"I want to get a tank for my kid, and I want to start small so they can get the hang of it..." It's not easy convincing these people that smaller tanks require MORE maintanence.

"Oh, I want a beginner goldfish."

"I had goldfish for years in a bowl!" to which I reply, "20 years? Because goldfish aren't old until they're 20, and the record age is 43."

Every day at least three or four people will come in wanting "allergy eaters" or "sucker fish" and when I ask what kind, they just look blank, or say "the one I had before was THIS BIG and black... so I try to steer them away from a common pleco, and then find out that all their previous algea eaters died because they IN FACT HAVE NO ALGEA IN THE TANK. People are being told that catfish and algea eaters should be the first fish in a tank! And if I find out who is spreading this lie I'll scream!

"I want three tetras." to which I reply, "What kind of tetras?" "Oh, you know, tetras." "Well," I say, "There are two dozen species of tetras in this store, and technically pirhanas are tetras, so what kind were you thinking of?" That always gets them.

Oh yes, I'm a fish snob b**ch.

I'm so adjective, I verb nouns!

I don't care if he is dyed or not... he matches the room!!!!

Sure, all these little fish will fit in a 10 gallon tank (1 oscar, 4 banjo plecos, 2 orandas, and a betta)



___________________________________________

If at first you DO succeed, try not to look astonished.

As an addendum to that Tribblehappy, you might like to know that my Panda Fun Palace™ was cycled way back in 1994 with Otocinclus.

However, I knew right from the outset that I wanted Otocinclus. So I spent time and effort getting the aquarium ready for them. I spent time deliberately cultivating algae for them to eat. And stocking up on foods that would supplement their diet. So that when I took delivery of the Otocinclus on December 12th, 1994, they had a home fit for their arrival. Nice pieces of bogwood with algal growths awaiting them, live plants, and a carefully dosed diet of algae wafer supplements and the like. Then, after six weeks, the Cardinals went in.

That original batch of four Otocinclus lasted a long time. I only had to start replacing losses after about 5-6 years. One of them lasted over nine years. I said goodbye to the little fellow as old age finally overtook him on March 12th, 2004.

But then, I planned in advance for the little guys.

And, the fact that my Pandas have now spawned 70 times in less than 2 years since I got them in December 2002, is also a testament to the fact that I've done things right. I planned ahead for them.

Use the brain cells before spending a penny, and later heartache is avoided. Trouble is, too many people dive into fishkeeping thinking that it's like buying a TV - plug in and go. Doesn't work like that I'm afraid.




Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002