# Your Bad Experiences at the petstore....



## Pac-Man (Mar 18, 2005)

come here to share some of your worst experiences at the petstore!!!!! here ill share one of mine...

It was a bright sunny day. i was at petco to pick up a master test kit. I overheard an employee talking to a son and mother.

Son:i want that big silver fish...
Mother was holding the "fairly odd parents" 3 gallon bowl in her arms. she was obviously looking to setup a fish tank with her son. The man replied to the boy:That fish is called a silver dollar. its cool isnt it??
Son:yah
Mother:how many can we fit our bowl???
Employee:2-3 wont be too much. just make sure to get a good filter and you should be fine. 

ughhh.... they ended up buying the silver dollars too... i hate petco...well, thats one of my stories. any1 else??


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## Celeste (May 13, 2005)

i once had to talk a 13 year old out of buying the little 1.5 gallon spongebob tank and putting angelfish in it. we (me and other forum members) finally talked her into getting a few tetras and a larger tank after telling her how delicate angels were and that they got 6" long or larger (several forum members had tried to care for angels and had had no luck, even though they'd had large freshwater tanks for years and were expirienced caring for a freshwater tank)

most of my bad expiriences have to do with hermit crabs though. most places have them in tanks that are too small, in bad shells with holes in them, very low humidity, no salt water.... petco's strawberry crabs (One of the most delicate species of hermit crabs) often have 20% humidity and no salt water. hermit crabs need at least 70-80% humidity or they'll suffocate. petsmart isn't any better. i often find legs in their tanks. hermit crabs only drop legs due to stress. i've complained to the employees so many times, even called the corporate offices and complained. they're working on fixing their setups, but they've still got a ways to go. 

also, i hate that they reccomend that the minimum cage requirement for finches is something like 11X13X15 or thereabouts. for one, fiches need to be in groups of two or more, as they are social animals. i wouldn't keep a pair of finches in anything smaller than an 18x18x24" cage, and the 24" needs to be the width, from side to side. they fly horizontally, not vertically. 

same with cockatiels. they reccomend an 18x18x24" cage for a cockatiel. that's fine if you let the poor thing out of it's cage for most of the day, but not if it's going to spend most of it's time in there. my single male cockatiels cage is something like 18x24x35 (not sure on exact measurments) and i wouldn't put him in anything smaller unless i was home all the time to allow him to be out of his cage for hours on end.


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## Pac-Man (Mar 18, 2005)

nobody has had a bad experience!!!??? come on, stop being so lazy and just type your story!! :wink: !


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## fish_doc (Jan 31, 2005)

Calm down there pacman Its only been a hour since you posted this. There were 180 posts since I last logged in that I had to sort through before finding this one. :lol: Im not a speed reader. GOSH. 

One experience I had was with a chain petstore. I picked out my fish and they were up on a ladder getting them out of a upper tank. When she netted the fish she started down the ladder when the fish jumped out of the net. It fell to the bottom step. Since it jumped out of the net when it was about 5 feet in the air and landed on the bottom step, It fell 4 feet. She steped down around the fish picked it up and put it in the bag. Then tied it up and handed it to me. I asked if the fish was ok and she said, Well if its not we have a 14 day warranty just bring the body back and we will give you another. :shock: Luckely the little guy was fine and lived for 5 years with me.


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## Niki2105 (Apr 12, 2005)

Well I was at walmart a few weeks ago cause i wanted to get a calico fantail so as i was looking at them i glanced over at the lion heads and noticed one was missing an eye then on closer inspection i notced that it was also missing both front fins and not swimming very good. There was noone around to ask why they werent humanely killing it or something and i couldnt bare to watch it no more so i had to leave the fish department. I hated to leave the poor guy but there was nothing i could do at the moment. There has been a few times i was there and one was missing an eye but this was a first for both fins gone to it was awful. 

One time i bought a betta (dont remember where) and when i got it home and into its new tank i noticed that it was missing an eye. He was too pretty and nice to take back so i kept him and i think he lived for like 2 years. 

I dont really have any horror stories the only horror is the outragous priced on everything.


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## Celeste (May 13, 2005)

this hasn't happened to me, but i know people who have seen it first hand, but at some walmarts on the east coast, they were selling hermit crabs in the little deli cups with some gravel and some water in the bottom of the cup. hermit crabs cannot be kept like that. i'll put mine in a rubbermade shoebox for like 15 minutes while i clean out their tank, but that's it. also, every time i go into walmart, their koi always look so skinny. i own 4 normal koi and 2 butterfly koi and mine are nice and plump, but not fat. i know what a healthy, well-fed koi looks like, and those just look so thin! i also am constantly seeing the fan-tailed goldfish (i'm including all goldfish that have the short little round bodies, lions-heads, ryunkin, etc. as fan-tail) with missing fins, large wounds, ich, swim-bladder problems, etc. 

in my oppinion, wal-mart shouldn't be legally allowed to care for and sell live animals, fish or otherwise. unfortunately, most people don't really consider fish to be true "animals"


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## Lexus (Jan 19, 2005)

here I come in defense of walmart... lol not all walmarts are bad like that ours isnt because i practically ran it for a year and still go over and help with the fish when needed.


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## MiSo (May 3, 2005)

i passed by walmart yesterday, and saw alot of dead fish in the tank. some fish looked like they were dead for aleast a couple days....

:shudder:


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## mlefev (Apr 19, 2005)

the Petsmart here is pretty decent. The people who run the department actually own and care for fish as well, so they're a bit more up on a happy fish's needs. 

Walmart is horrible here though. They had a fish deteriorating into bones in a tank and hadn't removed it. A little kid saw it and started bawling her head off...probably the first dead thing she'd seen in her life. I almost felt like crying after seeing that. (Haven't been to walmart ever since)

The thing most people do wrong when they see animal abuse at a store is talk to a manager, if they even give you the "ho-hum" routine it's time to go higher up on the totem pole. The manager figures you'll leave and a bunch of other people will replace you. Call the corporate office sometime with a full list of the things you see happening and explain that you told the manager what was wrong...funny thing happens...you don't see that manager EVER again. I've done that twice at Petco this year, and the manager went "poof" the latest manager seemed sincere in wanting to better the fishes' lives so I'm giving him a chance. Like I said in another post, there were betta cups with no air holes, I had a fit, now they all have air holes...so some are willing to change things, and the ones that aren't should go byebye very quickly. (Not that those horrid little cups should be used for any fish...even a minnow in my opinion)

I'd do the same at Walmart, but the few times I went in last year (before that latest incident), I never saw the same people anyway, so the employee turnover is so bad you don't even have time to file a real complaint.


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## John (Apr 19, 2005)

I love my LFS, and this isn't that bad, it was just something that happened that I was a little disappointed about... I was buying a Weather Loach one day, and they had it all bagged up when the bag popped and the fish fell to the floor, flopping around. The employee, who was usually pretty nice, started rambling to the other employee about how they needed to stop getting the cheap bags ("That's the third bag that popped this week!" - that kind of thing). I looked between them, incredulous that they were just standing there talking while the hardy little loach flopped around and rolled under a shelf. Finally, after being politely patient (for about 5 seconds), I asked if they were going to help me get the animal. I ended up picking it up and dropping it in the bag. Of course, I bought it, since it looked fine and Weather Loaches are, shall we say, a little prone to flopping on the floor once in a while. I was just a little dissapointed about how they didn't pick the fish up right away.


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

It looks like I'll be starting work at our local Walmart next week. We are getting a supercenter next year, and my plan is to be in the pet dept by then so the fish will have half a chance. Maybe I'm out of my mind?

Hey, Celeste, my opinion matches yours. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that NO petshop anywhere should be allowed to operate without some sort of difficult-to-earn certification. It's appalling how many people who have no business being in the pet business are out there even now, wreaking untold havoc. I envision a national standard test called CARE, (Captive Animal Retailer Examination ) which has a written portion and a skills demonstration. On this test are all the things a petshop owner would HAVE to know to get a business license.
It would work on a model similar to the one the SCUBA industry has used for years.
THAT would get the morons out of the way, and let the good shops, and their customers, finally prevail.

I have most of the details already hammered out and ready to go, and I've even written a few hundred test questions.

What can I say? I've had a LOT of bad petshop experiences. It's time these clowns were eliminated.


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## mlefev (Apr 19, 2005)

That's pretty typical for local pet shops. The one I usually go to only has a dozen or so employees and they're so discombobulated on the details of things like that, that they don't react quickly to a problem. I just wish people could realize that when you're buying a fish...you're not just buying "a fish" it's your pet, just like a dog or cat would be, and it taking a nose dive onto the floor isn't a good feeling.

I hadn't owned anything but dogs for years, but when I moved out of my parent's place, I wasn't going to subject a dog to being cooped up in an apartment. As I've started taking care of fish, I realize how plain ignorant the clerks (and managers) are about the pets they're selling. I asked the manager at a store, "is there anything that could live with a betta". He said no, they live in bowls, or room temp water, so they'd kill tropical fish because of the difference in environment. He reccommended a fancy goldfish...I told him he was an idiot and left.


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## Osiris (Jan 18, 2005)

hmm well i used to visit a LFS and buy ghost shrimp cuz of a girl that worked there, lol. But that was years ago, latest thing i overheard was petsmart, the old goldfish in agoldfish bowl thing...


O and discovered that the prepared SW u buy from LFS here one, is the SG levels are below normal lol. Glad i test it before adding to tankbefore..now i have RO unit


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## Pac-Man (Mar 18, 2005)

hehe srry if i felt like i was bothering you fish_doc :lol: but surely you could see by my emoticon( :wink: ) i was only joking :mrgreen:


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## Thunderkiss (Mar 19, 2005)

Meh, i don't have any, as i know what i'm doing and usually wind up schooling the local slobs when i shop incognito at other locales other than where i work.
They hate me and for good reason. I think oldsalt has the right idea. However it needs to be extended to the breeders as well. Idiots one and all.
So all my horror stories are about idiot customers that "know" more than i do  And i have a mamillion of em.


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## Celeste (May 13, 2005)

i have another one. has anyone seen those hermit crab kiosks at the malls? we had one at our local mall. it's just a cart with a 3'x4' big flat box with only about 6" tall sides. completely open top with maybe an inch of fine sand in it. i went in once and there were a bunch of people crowded around looking at the crabs, and i just started telling people that these conditions were not very good, that crabs need 80% humidity and a much larger container than the little plastic kritter keepers they were selling, and the lady who worked there got all pissy and started yelling at me "If you think there's something wrong, tell me, not my customers!" and i was like "Ok, your not taking care of these animals properly" and she started yelling at me that she owned several and blah blah, and if i didn't calm down she would call security (she started it ) so i walked away and went to the information desk and filed a formal complaint with the manager of the entier mall. he called me a few days later and i explained to him in more detail what happened and why i thought the Kiosks either needed shut down, or drastically modified, and about a month after that, they were gone from my local mall.

once i was there when they opened and took the cover off the kiosk and there were dead crabs and legs everywhere  it was awful. 

unfortunately, the Kiosks are back. i'm going to go back in and complain though tomorrow, print out some REAL care sheets, not the stupid FMR ones they have that they don't even follow. FMR makes good food, but they don't know crap about the overall care of hermit crabs.


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## Hamm3592 (Apr 24, 2005)

i dont really have a horror story about pet stores, except that at the petcos and petsmarts around me the employees are so rude, they act like they know more than you when usually they dont


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## fishfreaks (Jan 19, 2005)

i would share our stories with you, but theres so many we could go on for days! but our very first horror story- went to lfs to get back into the fish hobby, i had bought and paid for my 55 gallon fish tank.   the kid carried it out to the truck and when he went to put it down, he just let go, and didnt set it down, next thing you know, slam! the middle piece of wood for support breaks. $600 for this thing and it was broken the very first day

that is where our horror stories began


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## Ownager2004 (Apr 4, 2005)

I went to a local pet store to get 1 male platys and 3 female platys. This was when i was just getting into them and did not know if i could correctly tell them apart. Anyways I got home and it turns out i ended up with 3 males and 1 female. Needless to say the next time i went in i was the guy pointing out specific fish in a very crowded fish tank  And telling him when he got the wrong one. I geuss thats what you get for being an idiot.

Also all of the wal-marts i have been to seem to be fine. Though not optimal, they seem to have reasonable tanks.

I walked into a LFS in the town near my hometown once and smelled ammonia as soon as i stepped into the door. I didn't get anyf ish there, lol.


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## Simoriax (Apr 10, 2005)

Our pets at home fish department is ran by a guy who knows what hes doing. But one of his employees made me pretty mad once, to get the fish out of the caves she started to bang them with a net. The poor little guys where going loopy!


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## Thunderkiss (Mar 19, 2005)

And if i had a dollar everytime someone started wailing on the glass because they "werent moving enough" i'd be a millionaire.

That coupled with how many complaints i got for telling them to cease said activity  Course i shouldn't say that it isn't a circus heh, but it certainly makes the point well made.


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## fish_doc (Jan 31, 2005)

Its like going to the public aquariums. There are signs all over that say no flash photography. But yet you can almost go blind because of all the flashes.


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## queenbottomfeeder (Mar 8, 2005)

had an employee waiting on my husband and the store manager comes up and fires him right there and then the manager leaves and now there is no one to get my fish for me.


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## Fishfirst (Jan 24, 2005)

Sad... Its almost painful sometimes to work at a petstore and actually knowing what youre talking about. I've had to correct my coworkers several times now, and whats even worse is I sometimes need to correct my superiors... at least most of the time they take it well and are actually coming to me with questions and wanting to learn more.... now if I can just get them to switch from stocking STRESS ZYME and those snake oils, and get them to get in BIO SPIRA! hahah... I don't know how many times I'd be able to recomend that stuff because people HATE having empty tanks for a month.


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