Most of this post is just a pet store....review? Just talking about my experience really.
Went to a pet store today that I have never been to before. It was small and a bit dirty, like all the dry goods were covered in dust and I mean covered. They had everything though... fish, ferrets, hedgehogs, chickens, scorpions, frogs, snakes, lizards etc etc! And typical of something trying to do everything there were some downfalls. The fuzzy critters seem to be the worst off but not horrible just like they had no hiding places type of things.
But let's talk about the fish. It was almost exclusively 10gs packed with fish, PACKED! There was one cichlid that was literally just able to fit from top to bottom and from back to front and he wasn't alone in the tank! But other than a couple slightly cloudy tanks there were fairly clean and the fish looked very healthy, healthier in fact than ANY other place I've been recently except one saltwater specialty store which is phenomenal. And surprise surprise not a single dead fish! Tanks were all running big sponge filters only, individually heated (store was actually quite cold) and none were drilled for even water change purposes.
Unfortunately they had only 1 tank that had anything I was looking for and I didn't like any of them. They did have a bunch of stuff I never see at other stores though, some was common stuff even though like pygmy cories, rummy nose and ember tetras. Others were hill stream loaches, spotted hoplo catfish (considering!), checkerboard sand loach and mustard spot pleos among other things. They had salty fish I'd never seen before either including some large eels. Most of the salty stuff was in bigger tanks, not much bigger though.
Prices were about the same as other places, only a few prices were better than others. One price stood out clearly though. They had young, maybe 1.5-2", mbunas for $4! Never ever have I seen such low priced mbuna in a store.
It was a unique experience to say the least! And I may have found a bottom dweller I've never kept before so that's always exciting! (Especially cause I love bottom dwellers
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Just a small note that I setup a QT tank today. Just gonna steal some media from the other tanks when the time comes to put some critters in there. 3ft 30g bare bottom with semi- seeded sponge filter, it was in a tank with a few snails for awhile now.
