What is your #1 piece of Advice??

[Gusto]

Water changes and not overfeeding are the most important things you can do..

[Fractalis]

That your pet fish are completely at your mercy

unlike dogs or cats which can leave you to go find food or a better owner

[riddle4sphinx]

Applause to you for trying to do your research to help out fellow customers who may not know any better. One thing I read once was that any levels of ammonia in the tank water for a fish, feel like us having soap in our eyes. Maybe if you explain that to your customers and tell them they need to do water changes to fix it until the tank is cycled and after, that will paint them a better picture

[Turbosaurus]

Hooray PETCO!
OMG. I am so thrilled you came here, the fish in your store are so lucky. the bags of dog food for my two pups or my next requirement for my tanks will come from my local Petco becasue of you. I live in suburbuan NYC, there are 2 petcos, a petgoods and a petsmart- and because you are here - I am one more customer shopping at your store for LOTS OF STUFF *


Best thing you can do: Explain nitrogen cycle- and dumb it WAY WAY down. I know someone said forget the 1" per gallon rule, but you have to start somewhere and no one wants a six hour lecture - try these 6 rules,

1)Fish poop (verb)
2)Poop(noun) is poison. It will make your fish sick and die Rotting fish food will kill your fish too. Dont feed one speck more than they will eat. NOT EVER. Dont feed for first two days. If the fish dont eat, they are sick from unclean water. change immidiately
3)There is natual bacteria who will, over about 6 weeks be able to multiply enough to degrade this waste into something less poisonous. while you wait for this to happen, change 75-90% of your water every 3rd day for the first 6 weeks.
4) dont use any household cleaner in your tank ever. Fish dont need clean- THey need BIOLOGICAL BALANCE Dont rinse filter media in tap water ever.
5) pick out the fish you want, then add them ONE at a time with weeks in between each other.
6) THERE IS NO SUCH THING as a fish that eats poop (I've heard this a milion times from cutomers at petstores re any bottom feeder, cory/pleco). All fish eat fish food, some will clean algae, all poop (verb) NONE eat poop (noun). No one eats poop. Poop has to be maualy removed. It will be converted to a slightly less toxic substance if they let the natural bacteria grow into a nice helathy colony- but its still bad and has to come out.

[esoepr1976]

If people are buying fish as gifts, recommend a gift card instead--or recommend they bring the fish tank owner in with them. The gift giver likely doesn't know exactly what will go in the tank, and the fish will likely be in the bag way too long. Also at Christmas beware of people who actually want to wrap the bag of fish and put it under the tree. (I used to work at big box store, and yes, we had people who wanted to do that, they asked if it was o.k. for the fish. I had to say NO!, get a gift card for the fish--buy the whole tank set up, and get a gift card for the fish. Get the tank up and running and come get the fish later!!!) People get nutty at the holidays. So, as far as the live fish go, when it's gift giving time, go for the gift cards..... Plus, the kids usually want to pick out their own fish anyway.

Emily

[Windy]

Choose your fish carefully. You want healthy vibrant fish.

[excuzzzeme]

There are no such things as common plecos. The words are used when people get lazy and don't research their livestock. Even on the best intended sites, common pleco is used to identify any one of a 100 possible different plecos. Avoid ANY stores that sell "common plecos", they don't know what they are doing. That includes corporate stores. Plecos don't eat poop; never have, never will.

Water change, water change, water change.

[esoepr1976]

O.k., I know I already posted once, but I'm going to post again. No matter what you tell customers about how many fish can go in their tanks, your tanks will be overstocked. At my store we used the overused/not always right "inch per gallon rule". I always told them, that it was a rough rule, and worked best for small fish. (for example, ten one inch fish would be happy in a ten gallon tank, but one ten inch fish, while technically fitting the rule would not be happy because it would have no room to swim). Also, fish that grow tall, rather than long, like angel fish, take up more space per inch than fish that grow long but not tall. So, I would tell them this. But, I would always have some customers ask me how many gallons one of our tanks was. (they were challenging me b/c it was obviously overstocked). I would reply, "I don't really know, but our whole fish system is about 3,000 gallons. We have lots of extra filtration, and the way our filtration works, our tanks are continually undergoing a water change, and our fish are not in their permanent home, but are only here temporarily. But, I would get some customers who wanted to stock their tanks as full as ours.....

Emily

[Kaerey]

I'm not as experienced as some people but I now have 5 tanks (180g Turtle/Fish Tank down to Evolve 4) and I've never waited to cycle a tank before adding fish (OMG EVERYONE QUICK POST LINKS TO THE NITROGEN CYCLE FOR THIS NEWB!!!).

Instead I've been extremely successful using the quick start bacteria supplements (ex. Tetra Safe Start). When used correctly it can be very effective. In fact, my new office tank (Fluval Edge) came with a Nutrafin Cycle bottle and Water Conditioner.

The word of advice I have when using it is, Fill the tank with water, add the appropriate dosage of bacterial supplement, wait about 20 minutes, and then add ALL of your new stock, not just one at a time. The dosage directions of the supplements are designed to handle a fully stocked tank, if you have say a 20g tank, correctly dose but then add 1 fish, the bacterial levels will die off only leaving enough to handle the bio load of the one fish. If you then come back 3 weeks later and think your tank is fine because your one fish is still alive, and add 5 more. You will have issues, because the tank is not equipped to handle the increased bioload of the new fish.

Just follow the directions and all will be good. And the directions say to use it when ever adding new fish to a tank (established or not).

Just think how happy your managers will be if you sold a bottle of Tetra Safe Start with every fish you sold!!!!