Super-Store with Horrific Aquarium Conditions

tbone-ike

tbone-ike

AC Members
Oct 31, 2005
50
0
0
I just saw something horrible. I'm sure this has been discussed here many times before but.....I just got back from a local superstore and saw some terrible tank conditions in their pet department; worse than I've ever seen.

The water was filthy in every, completely overstocked tank! Some were so cloudy, you could hardly see the backgrounds. The gravel substrates and rear walls of the tanks were covered with algea. I'm sure they haven't done water changes and only occationally hang on a diatomic filter (which I saw) that connot keep up. All the tanks were terrible; some worse than others. Some of the tanks had dead carcuses, half rotted away, just lying there. In one particular 20 gallon tank, I counted 24-26 dead or almost dead fish, 4 of them stuck to the filter intake, and other still alive and covered with ich and rotting tail fins. There were probably 40-60 1" fish total in this tank.

You could almost (or literally) see the amonia and nitrite poising. Probably about 13 20gal tanks or so.

What a mess :mad2:

I'm going to email the corporate office tommorrow morning. They should not be selling fish at this point. There are two large pet-store chains in town, that appear to do a much better job, and sell most of the fish in this town, they need to get rid of the tanks and get out of the fish business....period.

I may call them instead/in addition to the email.

Sorry to start a post on this, but I just returned and it had quite an impact on me.
 
there is a petco near me that constantly have dead fish in their tanks and unhealthy fish in general, personally ill never buy from them, walmart or practically any other large chain. give me a lfs with test kits lying about and people who know their stuff anyday, ill happily pay the extra coin for the healthy fish
 
Where and what store is this? I would complain. Call the human society. Call the local news. Call the police. Chain Store Management shouldn't be so careless. Until they are fined or ticketed they'll keep on neglecting the fish department.
 
Sucks, Total Pet here is like that. A shame too because they have the best fish in town. They keep all kinds of brackish fish in one tank. It's always a little death-pit...same with the Tropheus...They're always doing the wobble that means they've been getting bloodworms for food and will die soon....
 
Our Wal-Mart here is really bad in the fish deptartment. Our Petco is decent except they have had ich for about 2 months now and they can't seem to get rid of it. One of our LFS went out of business, that one was the best. Every fish was healthy, they would tell you if the fish you were looking at would get a long. The tanks all had care tips about each species by it. I loved that store, makes me sad they are gone. Our other LFS is ok but they have their bad weeks. I want to get a job there to clean the fish department up. Make sure you keep on going with your complaints about the store. It sounds horrible.
 
The walmart by us isnt too bad, I usually get my fish from PetSmart though. they have atleast in the store by us a decent filter system, clean tanks and no dead fish. I asked the other day and they clean their filter system atleast twice a day.
 
Lol...I think there should be a sticky for folks to post thier "Ugly fish store" stories....it's a topic that keeps coming up and isn't likely to stop any time soon.

We all need a place to vent when we see stuff like this.....it's very discouraging and makes an aquarium nut just a little bit crazy I think. I see stuff like that I just want to grab the syphon and vac and get to work with the scrubbers and fresh clean water !!!! I keep my tanks cleaner than I keep my whole HOUSE !! (pretty sad really..lol) and I have a hard time walking away from stuff like that.....

Anyone think there should be a "deathstore gripes" sticky ?
 
I agree with the need for a sticky where we can vent. I figured this has been brought up alot, but just needed to vent to someone who cared :) It was really bugging me last night.

I sent an email to the stores corporate headquarters this morning. It was fairly lengthy, but explained what they were doing wrong - overstocking and not changing the water. I explained why things were happening like the cloudy water, algae, and dead fish. I also explained the effects of selling disease ridden fish to unsuspecting customers and the negative business impact of the disguisting visible mess they had. They do not have an integrated plumbing system; each tank has it's own HOB. By the looks of things, it's been months, if ever, that they've cleaned gravel or changed water.

I was kind in my presentation, but I got the point across. I suspect (and hope) I got them thinking. I even boldly asked them to re-evaluate the overall value of their fish/pet department. I also requested that they email me with their plan of action on this issue.

We'll see how they respond, both in email and tank maintenance!

Thanks for your support guys and gals :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom