Wal-mart still sell fish?

[tom91970]

I am very curious on how much Wal-mart makes selling fish. I can't believe it's that much.

Probably not much; however, if you can sell some fish for a few bucks they go nicely with a $100 tank and $60 stand...not to mention gravel, food, etc. that the consumer has to buy just to keep the fish.

It's like having a convenience store. They sell gas but make no profit worth speaking of. Let's say gas sells for $2.15 per gallon. The store makes about 2 cents per gallon profit (hard to feed the family on that). Selling gas is just something to draw in customers because if you drive a car you HAVE to have it. The customer comes inside and stocks up on cigarettes, lottery tickets, drinks and candy. That's where the profit comes from.

Same thing with fish and aquariums.

 

[Madcrawdad]

That's most likely a manufacturer's image supplied by Marineland, and not the fault of Wal*Mart. I bought a similar setup from Meijer a couple of years back made by Penn Plax... It was probably a 6 or 7 gallon tank, but I swear the box showed like 30 fish swimming happily in the lushly planted tank.

I'm sure it is, but it doesn't change the fact that they use it for advertisement purposes. Using such a picture tells a person that doens't know any better than it is ok do put 5 or 6 goldfish in a 6G tank. Hell, WM probably knows it is wrong but figure they can sell several fish to go with the tank, increasing their profit margin.

People will put blindly trust what they see or hear. And that, my friend, is a fact.

And I don't disagree....problem is, whether you go to Wal*Mart, PetSmart, Petco, or even to your LFS to buy that setup, that same pic will be on all of the boxes. IMO this makes a manufacturer seem even more responsible for creating potential confusion among folks who might not know better. The pics really do look nice with all those fish though, don't they?

Fortunately, there are more responsible folks out there. I just checked on this setup on Foster's & Smith. While the thumbnails show probably a few too many fish, they do show relatively empty tanks in their larger pics included with the descriptions.