*****...
I'm sure many petcos could do better in the display of animals / staff.
Algae is often caused leaving the store display lights on 14 hrs a day, large fishloads. The kicker is staff, most the horrible algae stores are probably on auto-pilot. Has no-one back there to scrub.
As for fish quality, you kinda get what you pay for. Is that cruel to say. Acclimation is usually only thermal, just floating the bags. There is no quarentine, and most of the systems are linked together, cheaply. Larger bulk of water gives more stability at the price of seperation. Disease can be easily spread, hard to eradicate.
But lets point the light at the reader, how many of you quarentine? And i've heard ever excuse in the book. Ironically Hobbyist who buy from private shops have the experiance and desire to quarentine, beginners or say, idiots, who can't / won't should buy from the private stores (since they sometimes quarentine for you ), and the experts should buy from *****( since they can usually handle it)
More money should be spent on a backroom... recieving animals should be quarentined and or held for a period of atleast two weeks in the back room, this would shield your eyes from the die off associated with shipping stress. LFS's don't have this and can look better because more staff means more people pulling dead fish, although some do probably quarentine. LFS central systems also seem to have better seperation, they tend to use sterlizers, ***** seems to have pulled them because of bulbs costs for replacement, and now relies more heavily in copper for salt. Which has problems.
Knowledgable staff, you only get someone who knows what they're doing at night, when you find someone down on their luck, and needs a job bad. Car exploded, lost job, etc. You can't afford to feed a gerbil on the slighty above min wage a rookie banks. Alot of workers are slackers. Should have a good training class, some fish stores call their employees fish certified, or they train them, and then test them, but you have to pay them too.
I would like all salt fish to be captive bred, but if you find why they're not, breeding some of them is like cracking the human genome. We don't have the technoligy or methodology yet, hopefully that will change. I hope all are caught using consienciest methods in a replinishable manner, not cynided and fished to extinction. Collection points should be mac certified
Shipping, you know there is an effort to make airplanes charge by boxes instead of weight, water weighs alot, so they put more fish in less water. They should definitely ship with more water and less fish to the bag. Also, i wonder if they use a slow release ammonia neutralizer, probably not because it adds cost, but that would probably help.
what else, oh, stuff, go to any hobbyist store and you can get specilized materials. Better more specific diet, and medication. This should damn well be provided by the store, but isn't. Without a quarentine facility, better more aviable meds, and a trained person who wants to be there.... You have it
If they did all these things, that would just turn them into a speciality store. It would raise the price, isn't the reason you went there in the first place... a cheap cheap fish.
I do think things can be improved, it depends so much on action. ***** does say they want to improve...
allow night 'specialists', higher paid people who know what they are doing, allow more budget for fish - order what is needed (speciality items included). Bring back the sterilizer, bring back more frozen food selection, retrofit a small back area for salt and injured fresh atleast...
Better shipping and distribution would be a plus too.
I think ***** could do this and still make money... maybe not as much... i hope they improve and still keep the prices down, but i wouldn't mind paying a few dollars more a fish to have a better chance... wouldn't you? if you think so too tell ***** that... pay alittle more and get more
talk to gm if you want, but these are really corporate rules that managers are following... this has to be addressed at the top
for now..
deal with devil... ask the history of the fish and if its eating, but don't get mad if they don't remember each fish offhand, but do ask to see it eat... ***** can't hold or quarentine so if you absolutely can't ever ever have a q-tank, pay more for some other store to do it for you and only buy from that store... and pay {makes hand gesture for flipping through money} deal with someone who knows... preferably specialist... if you can't, days off whatever then you're on your own - judgement... thats why they need higher paid night specialists!
thats my 2 cents and a guppy....
any thoughts?
