Little Shop of Horrors at local Petco

ichthyogeek

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just gave up on live aquaria? are you reffering to the decline in quality or is there a business sale in the works?

I agree the quality has gone down since they took over.

If I was a bit more spitfire-y and if I understand what's happening correctly (and it's not a lie), I'd probably go Karen on upper management , in that I'd call on behalf of the store and ask them why in the world they're sending fish to a store that is not ready for fish and has stated so. But I'm not, so I'd probably just make sure the fish expert doesn't get fired for something they can't control.

It's sadly not uncommon to hear about upper Petco management mismanaging the fish sections. A few years back, a guy I knew from a different LFS (which closed due to issues) was working at the Petco, and he told me that the manager had straight up washed the tanks with bleach...and then there's the great plagues of Petcos that just have very sad tanks.
 

Tired

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I went to a Petco once awhile ago to grab some fish food, and saw they had baby dart frogs. In an enclosure with pinhead crickets, which are way too big for them to eat, will stress them out, and might even bite them. When I pointed it out to an employee, they told me that they hadn't been given any information on how to care for the frogs, and that nobody involved in the ordering had made sure they had fruit flies available to feed the frogs. So they had frogs in an unsuitable enclosure, without any food they could eat, because that was what they'd wound up with.

Petco doesn't care about the animals they sell. Otherwise they'd stop carrying so many parrots that are inevitably going to bad homes, and all those little "hamster enclosures" that are just bad tupperware. They just want to make a profit.
 

Waynerock

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HA! I clicked on here thinking pet co was selling little shop of horrors zoa. What a goober I am. My petco does carry really nice clams and kinda sad acros though. They where selling helfrichi fire fish for 49.99 a week ago! I was bummed I had no room for them
 

anthonygf

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everytime you "rescue" a fish from petco they will replace it, I would not support them if they are treating livestock inhumanely. Some petcos might find someone to work there who knows what they are doing, but most wont be there long term and as soon as they leave or get replaced, its by someone who doesn't know what they're doing and everything declines again. Also some stores wont allow disease or parasites to be treated so they are left to die. Petco just gave up on liveaquaria so hoping they will give up on their saltwater departments soon.
I won't ever look at their salt water area, already rescued a yellow Tang. Like you said we should not encourage Petco to run a salt water system, they should give it up!
 
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Trever

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HA! I clicked on here thinking pet co was selling little shop of horrors zoa. What a goober I am. My petco does carry really nice clams and kinda sad acros though. They where selling helfrichi fire fish for 49.99 a week ago! I was bummed I had no room for them

Now I understand the previous poster on this thread who mentioned this. I had no idea there was a Zoa named that. Sorry, but rather funny.

Re LiveAquaria, one of my greatest frustrations as a newbie is the difficulty I've had getting information on the industry in general but the fish and coral supply chain in particular. It makes me feel like a mark, ethically blind, etc.

Someone on another thread said "everyone" is getting fish from one of three wholesalers. If that's the case, I guess LiveAquaria is one of those? This all came up because I was wondering if Petco (counter intuitively) might actually be a great source of fish compared to other LFS's we have around here in the northern hinter lands, because they're large enough that maybe they had better control of a supply chain for their stores. Anyways, digressing I guess. I do want to check out this other localish Petco that apparently is pretty good.

So the guy at my local Petco was all excited about the state of the art tank system they just got. UV etc. It was supposed to take care of itself (some words to this effect from him and the employees I had spoken with weeks prior before the salt stuff came in). But I didn't understand these comments because it was jarring to hear them also talk about making the salt water there... obviously it wasn't magically "taking care of itself". They all pulled back the door on the sump down below the two banks of tanks, but I couldn't really see much, just that there was a common sump down there.

He seemed to have a fair amount of knowledge on reefing. I wasn't sure how he came to feel the issues we were seeing were the result of ammonia, however. He didn't talk about a simple test result, instead his remarks seemed to reflect the general state of neglect I saw- like no one was entirely sure about the system yet. I mean overall it both was and wasn't a typical big box retailer experience. Initially I was just happy a fish store down the street was getting reefing stuff, but then I was both unsurprised and yet disappointed at what I saw the other night. Blech.
 
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