Petco Poll

[O-man21]

I think it might depend on the store, but ours is REALLY bad.

[NJ Devils Fan]

I bet the one by my is even worse. Every fish tank has about 5 to 10 dead fish in it, and there are crickets jumping around everywhere. It's disgusting. :mad:

[Anton Wernher]

The ones i've been to are just as good as any small pet store... ok-bad.

[irishspy]

Originally posted by O-man21
I think it might depend on the store, but ours is REALLY bad.

I think it really does depend on the staff at each individual store. The fish in the West Los Angeles PetCo are in clean tanks and seem generally healthy --I haven't talked to the staff to gauge their knowledge, however.

In fact, they seem much better taken care of than at almost any LFS I visited in the West LA/Santa Monica area, some of which were downright appalling. :eek:

--Anthony

[StevieM]

Honestly , I haven't had to many bad experiences with them. Granted I have somewhat limited experience. When I got into this hobby I sized up every store within a 45-60 minute area and found some horrible conditions in some of the "local fish stores" I went to. Just plain dirty and I didnt even really know what I was looking for, just got a bad vibe in general for some. The Petco and PetSmart around the Buffalo area where I live seem to be quite clean, and they offer a large selection for beginners that is. Staff was OK, not too great, but quite friendly. All the prices in my area are generally comparable, I could drive an extra 1/2 hour to save 2 dollars, but what is it worth in gas to me, you know??? I guess its more the store and the area than anything else, IMO.

sm

[mwood322]

I guess I'm somewhat biased, since I work at one, but most of those in my area are okay, ours is better than some, worse than others. There's tons of behind the scenes work though. Hours of algae scraping, pulling deads, and water changes are all that keep ours good.

Also, about deads. I refuse to pull fish out until they are dead, not breathing heavily upside down, but no breathing at all. We pull them once every few hours, or when we get a break between customers. If it's busy they don't get pulled. Be relieved you aren't there in the morning, especially after shipment day. For all you know we just pulled them before you got there, that's why there aren't any dead ones. :D

And as to crickets. Getting them into bags is normally a production, they get fed to the reptiles, and every once in a while a shipping box opens up, so most Petco's have a few crickets wandering around. Call them lucky. :p

The main problem you find in larger chain stores is you can't keep people who know and like fish there long, because the entire idea of retail isn't very friendly toward fish. I don't even know how long I'll stay just because the selling strategy isn't always great and we insist on stocking dyed and large growing fish. I always make sure people know how large their fish can get. Haven't sold any ID Sharks yet. People still want plecos though, and balas, even after reading the labels. There are so many people who buy fish who thouroughly expect it to die, so refuse to spend any money on better choices, or listen to advice on why they are dying. Too many people forget that fish are alive.

I spend more time having to get the cheap fish for people who expect it to die than actually getting to give advice. I actually spoke to someone with a 9 inch Oscar in a 10 gallon today. He wanted to know why his son's Oscar was developing HITH. My store recommends at least a 75, and we just got 2 big Oscars dumped at our store with a 12 inch pleco in tow. None of which we really had room for.

I've been to most of the fish stores in my area, I've seen some horrible ones, and I've seen some good ones and my favorite is over a half hour away, and is currently the only place I regularly buy livestock. I pick up some at Petco, but only if they've been in a few weeks, and are very impressive fish. I buy most supplies online, since I am quite aware that Petco, even with my employee discount is almost twice as much as online for supplies.

--Mia

[blee358]

I dunno where you guys live, but down where I live there are good petcos. There fish are actually alive and the employees know what their talking about. Well, most of them:rolleyes:. They also keep their fish healthy and well fed. However, overall I think abt. 75% of the other petcos are really crummy.

[O-man21]

I think ours here is REALLY bad, first of all... They almost never clean the tanks for all I know, and there are always at least 4-5 dead fish in each tank. One time I went to it to get fish food, and they were cleaning out the feeder tank, (where they keep 100-150 fish in a 55 gallon tank) and they were sucking up fish in the siphon, and they keep oscars with each other and they have pl*co's in there too, in a 30 gallon tank!!And they feed them feeder fish that they raise there that have ick and other diseases. Half the time the oscars are pale and are very skinny, almost as bad as the ones at Wal-Mart. They have crickets loose and they even have bird escapies, I saw one hit a window and just lay on the ground and noone did anything to help. That is about all I can think of right now, but there is a lot more then I can think of. That is what happens at my PetCo.

P.S: sorry about that mwood322

[DrDeath]

We have 4 PetCo's in this area. For the most part their fish look pretty good. The birds are always clean.

HOWEVER, one of their grooming shops here killed a dog 2 summers ago. It was about 90 degrees here and they left the dog in the cage with the dryer on for over 2 hours (no air conditioning at the grooming salon). I have vowed to never buy anything from that particular location.
:(
DrD

[O-man21]

yea, I don't buy anything form it any more because of the "bird incadent" listed in my above post

[gillfluke]

It really does vary from store to store.
I have been to the one in yonkers NY
which is a diaster. And I have also used
the Petco on 86th street in NYC which
is not so bad. But folks lemme tell you
the LFS in my neighborhood could make
even the worst Petco look good

[vfrex]

My petco is pretty solid when it comes to animal care.

[NJ Devils Fan]

gillfluke, thats the one I'm talking about, it's like 2 minutes from my house. It's a complete dump. And the last time I went there, there were like 10 people on 1 line, and there was just no one at the regester. The only good pet store on central ave. is PetGoods.

[JeffP]

After reading about many of your experiences with pet shops, I really appreciate the shops we have in syracuse. We have several really good shops...including the petcos.

Anyway, kudos to syracuse area lfs.

[Jaydog985]

My Petco has actually had all of its freshwater tanks on quarantine for 2 months...... don't know why they even bother.......

[Xielos]

Good

The PetCo near me is almost always clean, but I can spot a couple dead ones here and there. Sometimes the tanks are filty, other times they look pristene. But try finding anyone who works there, not just in the fish department. I wanted to see how mcuh the unlabled crowntails were, after waiting around 10 minutes for somone to appear, thinking they might be in the bathroom....helping someone else bbeyond my sight...in the back...I have to go to the front register at the other side of the store and ask the lone cashier. She follows me 5 steps, the lo and behold, the "fish guy" appears out of nowhere, and she says, and I quote, "There he is, go attack him".

[daveedka]

You forgot the option of: Don't know because I boycotted them so long ago I couldn't tell you ;)

I quit going to petco sometime in the mid ninety's because the one I visited had too many dead fish, and not much I wanted. I do not knoow if the one in my area is any good, but since I know where a couple of decent LFS's are and we have a decent petsmart nearby, I have no need to go to Petco right now.
Dave

[mrgrudge]

Bad in general, and I'm not talking just about fish. Do they every clean the ferret cages and give those critters a bath once in a while or check them for ear mites? Mine live like kings compared to the ones in those stores.

Someone else mentioned the problem of just finding an employee to help you. At Petsmart I usually have them crawling out of the woodwork asking if I need help if I simply stop for a second to look at something.

[mostlycichlids]

PETCO SUCKS would Never buy any animals there unless frozen but then their frozen food is old. Employees dont know what they are talking about.

[nerdyguy83]

I have never bought fish from Petco, but I have seen various abuses of fish in the local one. (I've told this story before, but...) I once saw a small lobster in a tank with two crayfish. One was dead (with limbs torn off), and the other was actively being chased around the tank by the lobster. On numerous occassions I have seen male betas in their wall tanks (that look like somewhere around 15 gallon?) with upwards of 30 other fish. I suppose this is better than a cup, but its still not great. Employees say, "Oh, we should look at that," when I mention it to them, but nothing is ever done.

On a non-fish topic, I bought two female gerbils from Petco last summer. Both turned out to be pregnant. I went from 2 gerbils to 9 gerbils is short order. When I called to tell them, the guy covered the mouth piece of the phone and yelled, "Hey Steve! We've got a male in the gerbil tank!" I have since had much experience in sexing gerbils. Its not hard.

[orly081]

But no longer do. It's not only that the employees don't take care of the animal habitats but management doesn't give a **** either...about both the employees or the animals unless they're getting walked by the district manager. Then they have an employee spend about 1 to 2 whole days doing nothing but cleaning it out and setting it back up good for the walk and then once the walk is done then it's back to doing it half assed, if at all until the next walk. I was the only one that ever tried doing things by the book as well as taking the initiative but eventually got tired of doing almost everything by myself and no one helping and no one ever takes your advice or training, I was the oldest employee up to that point with the most authority, to heart. I was normally in charge of the aquatics department and had that place running like it's own store, as if it was separate to Petco. Whenever I had 2 or 3 days off straight I would be scared to come back to it because no one bothered to keep an eye on the tanks and their levels, do stiff checks which wasn't often since I took care of it well, when we received fish they would do it wrong and/or place them in the incorrect tank which would take hours to put them in the right one. No one knew about fish or anything so I would have customer complaints about not being told if that fish needed specific water levels or fish compatabilities, and a lot more. Again, reason for this is management. I've heard from various managers how they hate aquatics and how it's the one department that gives them the most headache. What was funny how every day I would hear out of the store manager's mouth "man, the store looks like ****...but aquatics looks awesome." I was like well, if you actually stationed an employee in each section for them to only maintain that one department, everything would look awesome. But to no avail. I came back some time after I quit to get some fish I ordered and in each tank there was an obscene number of fish floating in each tank. Some lights weren't even on and large amount of algae. The department was a mess, products all over the place. But it's not just there...it's almost every store in the district here in Miami save but one. lol, we've even had ferrets stolen on 2 or 3 occasions.

[Wishful]

It all really comes down to the individual store. We've two Petsmarts within easy driving distance. The first one has pretty good tanks, but don't have high volume sales so they only stock the most common of fish and only a couple of their fish folk really know what they're talking about on more than a few species. And most of them readily admit when they're not sure about a question. The real problem comes when a non-fish employee is asked to work the tanks--had a dofus try to "catch" some zebra danios for me by swirling the net rapidly in the tank like he was washing clothes. He explained that he'd "figured out" that if you tire fish out, they're easier to catch! I declined the purchase, found the manager--and haven't seen the guy working there since. The other location sells higher volume, their main three fish folk are really good with explanations and I've regularly heard them discourage people strongly from poor purchase choices.

The Petco near us has a salt-water fanatic who loves her marine babies--but really doesn't care at all for freshwater. She keeps the tanks clean, knows what's on the tags, but admited to me she doesn't really keep track of what people buy or if it's appropriate because "they'll all die anyways and who cares?". Their plant tank was horrible, recently cleaned up a bit, but it's still a hell-hole.

A local independent fishstore came highly recommended, and in general I've been happy with their care and knowledge. Their labelling leaves alot to be desired at times, availability is highly variable, and their tank conditions look awful to the novice. But with just a little research, I realized their tanks--some with brown water, some nearly black, generally very low light levels etc--are fitted extremely well to the actual ideal conditions for those species.

[FLmomof2]

In my area the Petco is bad but not as bad as the three LFS's. The one LFS is fish only and it's terrible I went in one day to see what they were like the fish tanks water was yellow like pee yellow color. The plant tank was gross all the plants were covered in this brown stuff looked like dirt almost but covered like a film... it looked like it hadn't been disturbed in any way in a long time. The only decent place to buy fish or anything here without driving 2 hours in at Petsmart. I must say the staff at our Petsmart is really good about asking about your other fish,tank size etc... They have a good handle on the fish they have in the store and the other products as well. I haven't seen a new person working fish in over six months so they are doing something right keeping the same employee's in the department for the long run.

[reichebrown]

petco isnt great. They were the only LFS when i started in college. I had no room for a QT and had tremendous problems with ich. Pet supplies plus is even worse. I love my mom and pop

[lobstar]

I'm new here, been a lurker for a while, I just wanna give my .02

I'm an employee for Petco, I'm at my second store, and I've worked at four so far. I guess I could say I'm biased, but it depends on the managment of the store. There are plenty of stores out there who's managers make it a priority for their employee's to take care of their animals. I work for one, and if there's an issue with an animal, I will stop everything I'm doing, regardless of who i'm helping and take care of the animal first. Sadly, there are plenty of managers out there who don't believe in that mentality, and every store has to get scapegoated because of their actions.

I only have a general knowledge of aquatics, but I certainly do my best to take care of the tanks, I try to make it a priority to keep them clean as possible and remove unsellables.

[Qdanita]

I live in Mt vernon NY and theres a new one by house that is very clean & net (maybe cause its new!) a LOT of young staff though so they may not be as knowledgable! (I'm glad i never wnet to the one in YO,NY!)

[yellow tang]

The one near me is really nice and organized, Tanks are clean and neat, nice plant growth, all the fish seem really happy. They are really clean and well cared for.

[5TankHarmony]

I've never even seen a Petco, so... don't have much input...

[nate da fishman]

my petco and petmarts suc k hey were getting me a buetiful blood parrot and he took her or him outma nd killed in her hand by squeezing it for some reason so i seriosly said u shouldnt be working her and filed a complait and i never see her ther ever again.



nate