"over stocking"

to let them live a better life! they would die faster in a crummy tank

They were born, raised, shipped, and sold that way to maximize profit not maximize the health of the fish. And the inch/gallon rule is a bad rule and no one should ever use it.

Have you ever been to walmart during a christmas sale its kinda painful pushing and pulling to get from one part of the store to another . well imagine living in those conditions except with other peoples feces floating around you. Its life but not much of one

sharpie said:

not being a hard *** or anything, but if most of these fish are born in over crowded tanks, shipped in over crowded bags and sold in over crowded tanks then how come all of a sudden when we bring them home its only an inch of fish for so many gallons of water and we have to make sure they have plennnnty of space?

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Hi,

The reason we give them much more space in the aquarium is so they can be happy and healthy. If we crowded them they would get stunted and not be happy.

Cory Lover

sharpie said:

what if it is over crowded with perfect water conditions? a lot of asian owned fish shops dont follow the "rules" and their fish are fine.

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Please define the term bolded above.


Also, do you have a large hidden sump tank as many pet stores do? Those "10-20 gallon tanks" are really quite large when sumps are included in the total water mass. Those fish are meant to be housed there sort term relative to thier liespan.

Feel free to throw out the "inch per gallon" hubaloo. A 10" oscar is not the same mass as a 10" gar, and no where near as small as 10 one inch guppies.

As I said above, they are in petstores for short term. As was pointed out, it is more for the benifit of the seller(read greedy,money grubbing humans) than the benifit of the fish. I've learned at AC there are people who keep fish how they want despite good advice. It's pointless to argue with them. However if you(not you personally, but "you" generically) choose not to provide the best possible living conditions for your fish, very few people will be willing to help when the problems they told you you would encounter come up.

a good profitable store is able to sell most of its stock within weeks if not months. ones that are not to quick either stay around for a while or end up as dead losses. the cramped conditions doesn't exactly let a fish thrive and therefore won't grow to its maximum potential, which LFS owners want because smaller fish are easier to sell.

and trust me, its not just asian fish store owners who cramp their tanks. if you want to make money, your going to have to break rules. (and the 1 inch per gallon rule is quite bad, never follow it).

crowded tanks work better with some fish than others - if you try to cram a load of convicts in a tank with perfect water, they'll kill each other. But it wouldn't borrow shoaling fish so much because they naturally live close to many other fish (although it limits the space available for the shoal to move0