Walmart fish
- Thread starter tidioute06
- Start date
I've got three wal mart's within 15 miles of me and 2 of them have better fish departments than our local petco
my local walmarts fish section started out with great tanks but ive noticed lately they arent so good..so..i asked the woman working in that section what was going on with the tanks and she said that she wasnt given time to properly upkeep the tanks because due to understaffing, she was working in other departments also so their wasnt much she could do about it..
Former WM pet dept manager speaks out:
I was dept mgr of pets in a WM in NC for 3 years. This was back in the days when they still sold hamsters, gerbils, mice, guinea pigs, and different kinds of birds- including love birds and cockatiels. I worked in the dept for 2 yrs before taking it over. If you have a nice pet dept in your WM then you have the employees to thank.
I was concientious about the tanks- clean and dead fish-free. My animals were healthy and not overcrowded in their cages. (overcrowding rodents causes cannibalization!) I took the time to learn which fish were compatible and made a system for the other employees to go by that was easy to follow. I took special orders from my customers for exotic fish. Our fish were overnighted from a company in Louisiana in a special heated truck by an employee of that company. All fish were inspected carefully before accepting and acclimated before adding to our tanks. It was THE place to buy fish in our town.
All that has changed. The pet depts are seriously downscaled now- most don't even have fish at all. None have other animals anymore. Your pet dept mgr spends most of their day doing paperwork- endless paperwork- and they have no one to come in to help on fish delivery day. A lot of places don't even have people specially designated for pets in the evenings at all. The tanks are easily accessible by anyone and sadly- people DO sabotage them. (Once in my store someone poured dish detergent into a 75gal display tak that was housing a 16" plecostomus and a 8" true gourami- the plecostomus died but the gourami made it.) The new tank setups have a shared filtration system and system that maintains the water levels in the tanks. I don't have the details about this system but I would think that if one tank had a problem then it would spread easily to all the other tanks. I was sad to see in my old store recently that they are using those vacation blocks to feed their fish- yuck.
I really think they should either allow the employees who work in pets to have time to care properly for the fish and the tanks or they should just stop selling fish altogether.
Just my opinion.
I was dept mgr of pets in a WM in NC for 3 years. This was back in the days when they still sold hamsters, gerbils, mice, guinea pigs, and different kinds of birds- including love birds and cockatiels. I worked in the dept for 2 yrs before taking it over. If you have a nice pet dept in your WM then you have the employees to thank.
I was concientious about the tanks- clean and dead fish-free. My animals were healthy and not overcrowded in their cages. (overcrowding rodents causes cannibalization!) I took the time to learn which fish were compatible and made a system for the other employees to go by that was easy to follow. I took special orders from my customers for exotic fish. Our fish were overnighted from a company in Louisiana in a special heated truck by an employee of that company. All fish were inspected carefully before accepting and acclimated before adding to our tanks. It was THE place to buy fish in our town.
All that has changed. The pet depts are seriously downscaled now- most don't even have fish at all. None have other animals anymore. Your pet dept mgr spends most of their day doing paperwork- endless paperwork- and they have no one to come in to help on fish delivery day. A lot of places don't even have people specially designated for pets in the evenings at all. The tanks are easily accessible by anyone and sadly- people DO sabotage them. (Once in my store someone poured dish detergent into a 75gal display tak that was housing a 16" plecostomus and a 8" true gourami- the plecostomus died but the gourami made it.) The new tank setups have a shared filtration system and system that maintains the water levels in the tanks. I don't have the details about this system but I would think that if one tank had a problem then it would spread easily to all the other tanks. I was sad to see in my old store recently that they are using those vacation blocks to feed their fish- yuck.
I really think they should either allow the employees who work in pets to have time to care properly for the fish and the tanks or they should just stop selling fish altogether.
Just my opinion.
My walmart as well sucks. I will never buy fish from walmart again everyone had Ick
That is good to hear. There are 2 WM's near me about the same distance apart going either way. One of them is TERRIBLE, and the other is AWESOME! I can say I have bought many a fish from the "good WM" (is there such a thing) and had better success than my LFS!! They have a nice selection of fish and even plants! I've gotten bumblebee gobies, tetras, mollies, platies, cories, and even my oto cat from WM. I even get my ghost shrimp from them and they are in better condition then my LFS. They have all kinds of fish, some of which you mentioined. I wish they would start to carry other stuff but you can't have it all I guess. They even have a pretty good selection of supplies and I hate to say this because I try to support the little guy but WM gets a lot of my business when it comes to their fish. Glad to know not all WM's fish departments are bad because I have heard horror stories.
