Fish from *****

[imaburch]

Hey guys I wanted to know what everyones opinion of the quality of fish that you get from *****? My LFS is not that great so I thought I would find out what some other peoples experiances have been like. Please let me know.

 

[corally]

I personally have never bought a fish from there but I can tell you, prepare to be bombarded with negative comments! With the exception of a very few people posting anything positive about them, ***** has a very bad reputation on this message board.

 

[mikeyjer]

I have bought some VERY nice fish from *****. It was a very nice place once until the girl who took care of the aquatics got promoted to manager position. That's when everything went down the tube. But now they fired those idiots and fired the idiot manager that was there and brought in some aquatic specialist. It's looking better again....They're still trying to offer me a job there for aquatics and avian section. I used to raise parrots for 5 years, have had parrots for about 10 years, only have a Blue & Gold Macaw with me and a Monk Parakeet that I raised at my grandmother's :happyfish

 

[froznfinn]

i've bought fish from *****..it appears that not all *****'s are the same..we have 2 in syracuse..1 place the fishare well taken care of and the other tanks need a good
cleaning and some of the fish didn't look healthy..be more cautious and really check
your fish..an excellant place to buy supplies

 

[murph]

As mike said it boils down to who is running the department. The purchase of saltwater fish is a crap shoot at best not matter the source.
It has always been that way and I suspect is partially responsible for the shift in this hobby to reef tanks with vary few fish and lots of live corals.

 

[kjord97]

Yes i will agree, it is all about the personal who work in the store. I personally dont ever net any fish, and the one thing i like is when you see an employee using a clear continer to catch the fish, less stresss is better. recently in my small town in maryland we got a bestbuy and ***** opened up. Crazy been 2 months and still hard to get parking spot. The ***** here is nice, as the aquatics specialist is a very good person. Plus with our saltwater club that we run in the area we are training her right. We even got her to stock some corals and live rock, but cant seem to get the prices lowered on that kind of stuff. But you cant beat some of the prices on fish. The one thing about anything you buy, make sure you set up a quaretine tank. Mine is a 29 gal and used spare parts laying around to set it up. I got about 6 thousand invested in my 125 reef and 50 gal fowlr, i would hate to get some junk from a petstore and crash my tank. So now a days everything goes into quartine tank. Take care and be safe

 

[vanquish]

I agree as well, each ***** is different depending on who's running the aquatics department. Some of them are really great, others not so much. My local one sells fish for good prices, and their aquarium manager hooked me up with some excellent advise more than once. He has also cut me a good deal one time: I had an eel who died the day i got it, so i returned the body and he sold me another for only half-price. On the other hand, if hes not in the people running it haven’t got a clue what they are doing. They spill water all over, cant tie a knot in a bag, its bad. Regardless though, ***** and petsmart are always good places to buy dry goods etc and their prices are sound. If I were you, id scope out your LFS stores, talk to the people, ask random questions and see how knowledgeable they are.

 

[saltn00b]

i walked into one near me recently to see what it was like. i have never been so angry and so sad at the same time. my initial urge was to burn the place to a pile of smoldering rubble, and free all of the poor little fish from the pain they were suffering in what was surely there last moments on this earth.

 

[danedodger]

Where are you at in Texas? I'm the Aquatics Specialist for the Temple ***** and can tell you anything you'd like to know about a particular fish.
Don't buy from anyone without a quarantine tank, though, and especially not from my store! We have problems that so far they won't allow me to treat properly and I would hate to see you get ripped off or get your whole tank sick

I think it's very true what everyone has said, some are good, some aren't. It all depends on the quality of the personnel.

 

[zsalinas]

I've never bought a fish from mine. I bought a hermit crab like a month ago. I asked the kid who runs their salt water section. He said that him and another girl did. He seemed like a pretty good guy until he proceeded to tell me he owned an octopus for 10 years. He was probably in high school still so that'd make it since he was like 8 if he was a senior. I just said "oh really" and got my crab and walked away ha ha. Isn't an ocotpus' life span only like 2 years anyway?
I probably won't end up ever buying a fish there after that

 

[milomlo]

My ***** is horrible. I always look at the fish, but they have like 10 tangs in a small tank. You can see their ribs and they just look horrible. Makes me so mad!!

 

[chipmaker]

I have always had praise for out local *****, as they had one girl that went above and beyond her job description just top make sure the fish department was right......never seen any sick fish except in the freshwater department, which this girl really did not have anyhting to do with, but helped every way she could.....Then she got promoted to a management position, and then later on she left and went to another LFS as general manager, and the fish department has never been the same in ***** since she left.....Tetra and mollies that looks like they were rolled in salt, missing tails on most of the damsels and other saltwater fish, feasting on dead tank mates, rotting annemones, and other critters.....even the hermits look pathetic....Last sunday one tank had 1 dead cleaner shrimp in it, not a single shrimp in that tank was alive........My opinion is it all depends on the personel they have working there and managements attitute to andle the problems and do things right and its going to be more or less location and personel that either makes or breaks any one certain ***** or other chain name store. They can be super one week and pityfull the next, but then that seems to be about the rate of turnover in a lot of those places anyhow.....

 

[cheapfish1]

my ***** around here sucks. I had to tell the moran working there that there were 5 dead clowns in one their tanks. From the looks of them they had been there a while. However the koi i bought there were very nice

 

[jr2857]

i just got a ocellaris clown from ***** wed. it's doing pretty good.

 

[chipmaker]

Originally Posted by cheapfish1
snip
However the koi i bought there were very nice
Thats really strange
I have yet to see any koi in any of the Petcos that I have been in worthy of saying they were nice or even close to healthy or disease free. Same for their goldfish..those two types were about the worst fish I have ever ever seen. I did an experiment at the request of folks in a koi /goldfish forum concerning Mela-Fix and some other such miracle cures and after hitting a few LFS looking for fish with definate problems preferably all from the same batch / tank......where I came up with the 200 subjects I needed to carry out my tests.........So I guess I can also say ***** caters to all kinds of weird needs and just happened to luck out and have more than what I needed, as I probably still left 100 in the display tank, but left with 200+ goldfish suffering from fin and mouth rot, bacterial infections, ulcers and a whole host of other problems...I actually bought the worst of the worst........I would like to do the same with marine fish but there to few in one tank to do a decent test with and the costs even for the sick ones are too prohibitive.

 

[wangotango]

be careful! i have always been a fan of the small "ma and pa" shops than the big name retailers like *****. the petcos in my area are not good, and the "aquatic" people know nothing at all. (i have tons of stories). if the fish looks really healthy, the tank is spotless, theres no other dead fish in the tank, and the guy didnt just go around with the net and the garbage bag id say go with it. dont buy anything too expensive.

 

[fishboy091]

the nearest ***** to me has pretty good freshwater but not good marine fish, infact they dont even have any. there tanks were so bad they took them out about 6 months ago and keep saying they're gonna get new ones but never do.

 

[kamaqazi21]

my ***** in my area is real nice the person in the aquatic department knows alot and really takes care of the fish. He even gives me a 15 day guarantee on the saltwater fish i get, the guarantee only applies to freshwater but he gives it to me on marine as well. Today i got 3 fish from there 2 were for my tank and one for my sisters. I got a coral beauty and a strawberry pseudochromis at great prices the CB was 13.99 and 5.99 for the psuedo with the pals card, i got good prices. The other was a half black angel for 13.99. So i got good prices and they are acclimating right now, and they looked healthy too. I have a 15 day guarentee as well so im safe and plus the sale price was too good to pass up. I have had good expirence with them, and it really depends on who is running it. Good luck and check it out sometimes you get lucky and a nice fish and great aquatic specialists and sometimes you get and IDIOT and sick fish. So becareful and make good judgements.

 

[dmm0724]

I've always wanted to start my own fish store but unfortunately its the big chains that do most of the business. You just have to remember that these franchised, chained places don't have much say in what gets done. Its all a corporate ladder that must be done to get things changed.
As someone else said, you cant treat something half the time because its not allowed. I think if the employees were more educated about a single subject then they could do wahts best for the animals but in the majority of stores its whats best for the customers not the animals.