Petco, Petsmart, Why Not?

[chamy]

I was reading a reply to a post earlier on a different topic, where someone said do not get your fish from petco/petsmart instead go to a LFS, why is this, i have purchased all of my fish except for my guramis from one of those two places. I only have one LFS close to me, which is where i bought the guramis, and i will never go back to him, though the fish seem to be healthy. his tanks were extremely dirty. Im new to this hobby, and i dove straight in fast, the guramis were the first fish ever that i bought. and the last that i will buy from him, the next LFS is aprox 30 minutes from me, and in an area thats heavy with traffic. so i ask why not petsmart, i would assume a retailer of that size, should/would have thier act together, meaning clean tanks, and knowledgable experienced employees. (plus really cute girls haha but i guess thats not what im there for)

[Pippin]

It all depends on the individual store and who is running it. Personally, my Petco and PetQuarters (a New England chain store) are my favorites. There are a couple privately owned petstores that I don't like (and one is supposed to be specialized in fish). So go on a case to case basis, you shouldn't really generalize. (although I will say that 95% of the time the walmart fish are an extreme risk....avoid them)

[chamy]

lol, i didnt even know that walmart sold fish, i dont think they do here locally, and yes the fish i have bought from petsmart have been fine for so far, so i will continue to shop thiere just bought 6 silver lyretail mollies today =)

[Pippin]

Yeah, the super walmarts sell fish unfortunatley. Mollies are very pretty, I wish my tank had room for them.

[Grahamandkim]

I work at a Petsmart and our fish are VERY healthy and well taken care of. And its the only place I will bring fish home from. Like Pippin said, it depends on the individual store. In general, unfortunately, most chain pet stores like Petco, Petsmart, etc. usually have very poor service, and most of the people working there dont knw anything about what they are selling.

[Jennicat]

I've seen both types of Petsmarts, the good and the bad. The one I frequent always has immaculate aquariums, and the girls that work the department are very knowledgeable about fish.

However, the one on the other side of town had filthy, overcrowded tanks full of dead and dying fish. I'd say play it by ear.

[chamy]

okay, thanks for the advice guys and gals

[Lacre]

At my Petco, they only have one filter behind all the aquariums that filters ALL aquariums. This means that if one tank has an issue, they all do. Recently they were hit with disease and they lost every fish in the store. Do with this tidbit of info what you will. I try to buy only from stores that have separate filters, but sometimes they have some really neat stuff at Petco I can't find other places--especially blue mystery snails. Since my tank is primarily snails (I LOVE snails!!) and snails are generally much hardier than fishies, I don't have a lot of the problems you guys do, especially things like ich, etc. So my input might not be as valuable as someone else's to you. But still. One filter for 50 tanks??

[Pippin]

I thought that Petco used that same kind of central filteration?

[hersheybaby]

i dont trust petco anymore i had bought 7 fish there all of my fish died expected for too i even brought in a water samplem and my tank was healthy i went to petsmart got some fish and i had them for about 2 weeks

[dandelion8]

It totally depends on what kind of fish you get and how long you've had your tank set up and everything.

The training at Petsmart is so-so. They give us training books that contain tons of good info... it's up to the employee to read/learn it. We have some awesome people in our aquatics department who are very informative and give good advice to customers. We also have several that don't know very much... didn't study the manuals... don't care about anything...

Anyway, we have customers brining dead fish back all the time (yay for the 14 day policy) and it's usually because some fish are more sensitive than others (like guppies -- they're not as hardy as people think & are sensitive to temperature changes) or because the tank is brand new and can't handle the amount of waste yet.

[jco4038]

I too have been to both sides of Petco, Petsmart, etc. I am lucky to live very close to a number of chains approx 10 minutes every which way from me. I have a 30 gallon tank with Danios, Barbs (Albino, Tiger and Rosy), and Bala Sharks for all which I got from Petco since Feb this year and have had no problems. The tanks at Petco were extremely clean, I visit the store practically every week and got to know the salesperson in the aquarium dept, and every single time I'm there, he is always maintaining the tanks. Petco also have the 14-day guarantee on dead fish, pending water testing, they'll replace your fish. I also go to private aquarium shops which are extremely helpful because they know the fish on a breed basis. On the other hand, I went to a Petsmart (tanks extremely dirty and way overstocked in each tank) as well as a Pet Supermarket (I hate this place with a passion, as they had the worst tank maintenance I have ever seen!! Dead and rotting fish in EVERY TANK!!)

[superjack]

i love the petsmart that i go to. their fish are always healthy looking and the tanks are always super clean!

[mr gerbil]

I've seen both good and bad. I used to go to my local pets at home (the Uk version of petsmart), but yesterday the tanks were full of rotting fish, the employees were as useful as trained monkeys, etc. I'll use my lfs in future (actually, I did today...)

Although there are good and bad chain stores, I've got to say that the small specialised shops are usually better.

[RavenRose]

Have to say, I'm another Petsmart employee, and my store is pretty good. Yes, we have training books, but a good specialty (fish, reptile, bird, small animal) manager will make sure that all of their people are learning whatever they can. Any of our employees, if they don't know the answer to a question, ask someone they know does. I guess it depends on whether the store encourages communication, which all our managers do, but I have heard of other stores where they don't. Plus our specialty manager makes sure she doesn't order too many of any of the animals so we don't have overcrowding issues. We have (and all the stores should...) checklists of things that need to be done, somethings on a weekly basis, most on a daily basis.... including a tank cleaning schedule. All in all, the company's getting better about making sure all the stores do what they're supposed to, but unfortunately for now it is still on a store to store basis.
Can't tell you much on Petco... I'm not a big fish person, so I don't look at them when I go there.
As far as Walmart goes, the one here ALWAYS has overcrowded tanks.

[guppie51]

No matter where from, a proper quarantine can save people lots of problems with diseases from new fish.

I personally get lots of fish offline from AquaBid (http://www.aquabid.com) (and used to sell there) because they are usually directly from breeders who bred the fish themselves and the fish are therefore less stressed, and very healthy.