Petco survey and store manager call

[don_chuwish]

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[garbled]

Honestly, what I ended up doing awhile back was talking to the person in charge of that area. He told me the day the fish would arrive, so I could get in there and scoop them out before they had a chance to sit in the tanks for more than 5 minutes. :)

 

[deaclauderdale]

Stopped by my local Petco a week ago to get some bedding for my daughters guinea pigs and to my surprise the generic 3 watt led over their ‘frag’ tank was replaced by a Radion G4 with diffuser, and surprisingly the fish in the tanks looked disease free. They guy that runs it said they’re finally starting to get some traction on being able to order the proper equipment from the corporate office.

 

[Tamberav]

Ya I think corporate really controls what managers can do. If you move a lot of livestock, seems you get better upgrades. There is a Petco in MN that is run very nice, the fish are healthy, they have a dedicated frag tank with good lighting, can get in rarer fish for ya and so on all with dirt cheap Petco pricing :D

But how are the struggling ones supposed to sell livestock if you can't get the basics to start with?

 

[Musovski]

being that i used to work at a petco as an aquatic specialist. I will say this, we were very limited. I did my best to try and keep the tanks well. I even ended up using one of my lights and moved all frags to this one tank. Once corporate comes i wouldve had to take my light off and well.... hide it.

that being said, i quit from there a while back. I recently visited because ive been looking for a certain fish which i was told the petco i used to work at mightve had. I went in, and i walked right out. Passion is just something that not a lot of people have, regardless of where you work.

Not defending or attacking Petco here just so everyone is aware.

 

[Jim Fox]

I've had nothing but great experiences with our PetCos. Fish, clams, inverts, corals, etc have always been excellent and I have bought a fair share for my tank and have not had any issues whatsoever.

 

[jda]

FYI - their fish and inverts come from the same place that LiveAquaria gets them. They are one-in-the-same now.

There are a few decent/good ones near me where there is a void of LFS - they must do more business at these. They can keep peppermint and cleaner shrimp, snails and crabs and basic fish disease free and reasonably priced - these are always in stock. They suffer with corals and you see a lot of empty frag plugs and mounts. Saw a purple tang in there the other day for $79.99 at about 3 inches - price is right. I have never seen any clams or inverts more difficult than a LPS, but I also do not go in there very often. I have no doubt that you could get a pygmy angel, niger trigger or scopas tang from this store and it would be as healthy as anything that you got from Live Aquaria.

 

[Captain Quint]

FYI - their fish and inverts come from the same place that LiveAquaria gets them. They are one-in-the-same now.

There are a few decent/good ones near me where there is a void of LFS - they must do more business at these. They can keep peppermint and cleaner shrimp, snails and crabs and basic fish disease free and reasonably priced - these are always in stock. They suffer with corals and you see a lot of empty frag plugs and mounts. Saw a purple tang in there the other day for $79.99 at about 3 inches - price is right. I have never seen any clams or inverts more difficult than a LPS, but I also do not go in there very often. I have no doubt that you could get a pygmy angel, niger trigger or scopas tang from this store and it would be as healthy as anything that you got from Live Aquaria.

One would think so.

From time to time I purchase some boxes of NSW from them and have become pretty close with the saltwater manager at my local Petco. I mentioned the LA thingy and he told me it is not always the case and the last shipment came from some 'off the wall company' and the fishes were sick.

He brought medicines from home to treat them. I do find it odd that they do not get everything from LA.

 

[Captain Quint]

Stopped by my local Petco a week ago to get some bedding for my daughters guinea pigs and to my surprise the generic 3 watt led over their ‘frag’ tank was replaced by a Radion G4 with diffuser, and surprisingly the fish in the tanks looked disease free. They guy that runs it said they’re finally starting to get some traction on being able to order the proper equipment from the corporate office.

That is awesome to hear about some decent lighting. Thanks for sharing that. I know they do the best they can with no much support from corporate.

 

[WallysWorld]

The Petco I visited in my area recently, barely had any fresh water fish, absolutely nothing marine! They have no marine specific food, what they did have was dual purpose fresh water/marine. Same for the rest of the dry goods and equipment.

PetSmart down the road about a mile is only marginally different. I think that they have 3 ten gallon tanks with marine animals in them.

 

[Oshengems]

I’m guessing this is changing the best petco in NYC I will say is in union square their fish collection is decent specially after their liveaquaria venture, for cleanup crew that’s my place to go always, and recently upgraded their coral area to Radions and have actual powerheads now not that bad, stopped by to pick up some brine last night and In case anyone is interested then have 2 sweet clams and derasa ~4” and a Maxima or crocea ~1.5” $55 can’t beat that someone please rescue these 2 clams. Anyways back to the topic I’m nyc I been to several from Yonkers to queens and Brooklyn while some are mediocre most are decent one thing to notice is the actual staff most don’t know what they are selling they just scoop and bag the ones that have knowledgeable staff usually have better stock. I grabbed a cleaner shrimp for the price of a peppermint and a gold nugget clown for the price of a standard clown but it’s not the staffs fault not being trained on what they are selling.

The person at union square in charge of the fish area is well knowledgeable in salt and planted aquarium and it reflects in the tanks

 

[Scotty Buttons]

The Petco I visited in my area recently, barely had any fresh water fish, absolutely nothing marine! They have no marine specific food, what they did have was dual purpose fresh water/marine. Same for the rest of the dry goods and equipment.

PetSmart down the road about a mile is only marginally different. I think that they have 3 ten gallon tanks with marine animals in them.

That's interesting, I've never seen a petsmart that had saltwater. ;Wideyed

 

[DesertReefT4r]

I used to be a mangaer and aquatics guy at Pecto. PM if you want some info on Pecto practices.

 

[don_chuwish]

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[MTBake]

The Petco near me was horrible just 2 years ago. They've made loads of changes to the store. Especially the saltwater section. Fish look good and they're planning a coral system. Looking forward to seeing some more positive changes.

 

[ncaldwell]

We've complained about ours so much that corporate decided to completely redo the fish section at ours. So that's a few fish that will be saved until they get the ole' murdelator installed

 

[mta_morrow]

tanks at my local Petco are very clean, but there are still signs of disease.

I am also fortunate that I can order specifics from my Petco.

I then get a phone call when the shipment arrives, every Thursday, and if what I ordered came in, I go get it before it goes in the tank. Still in the bag from the wholesaler.

 

[acro-ed]

I worked at a Petco years ago when times were tough as a side job. I basically said we either need more funds/more equipment to ethically keep and sell marine life, or we need to get rid of it entirely. The manager ended up getting rid of the marine section, which was admirable. Now, years later, they have marine life again and it is actually doing reasonably well. I see problems time to time when I pop in, but they finally were allocated proper funds to run it somewhat respectably. It varies store to store as to allocated funds and staff knowledge, hence the wide range of conditions.

 

[VR28man]

My thoughts on Petco overall are here:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/my-petco’s-beautiful-reefs.448156/#post-5080970

Bottom line: management appears to vary by store, and even more so by the available staff. Stores that do it poorly should not be doing saltwater fish. We should reward the stores that do it well (eta: like Phillip Chin’s store in the next post). We should use Petco's feedback mechanisms, to include (but not exclusively) our money to reward the good and castigate the bad.

 

[Philip Chin]

I guess each Petco is different. The one by me, the people are knowledgeable and all the tanks are well maintained. The salt water selection is fine too.