Why do they do it?

windeindoiel

windeindoiel

I
Mar 24, 2005
153
0
0
40
Canada
I'm becoming rather annoyed with how many large fish are being sold in lfs in my area. Arrowanas, moray eels, fire/tiretrack/peacock eels, gars... At almost every lfs (and there are a lot in my area and I try to hit them all on a regular basis to check out prices, employee knowledge and fish treatment) has some for sale. It makes me sad to think how many people are going to buy these fish as babies and not know what to do with them when they get older and so much bigger. :(

Oh yes I did see today though a tank full of baby barracuda feeding on guppies, it was pretty cool. But still, not the right fish for most people.
 
although i agree that the majority of large fish are sold to unsuspecting well wishers but i find it hard to believe that when purchasing a fish worth a few thousand dollars (such as arowana) you don't know what it needs to live. But fish such as oscers are sold to people that have no clue.

Although some fish have no place in captivity as long as they look *cute* or *cool* as a juvie there will always be demand and always be places that will sell them
 
They do it for the same reason that so many other terrible companys, organizations, etc. exist... MONEY.... Doesn't it suck?!? You'll get alot of venting, this might be a better question for the chit chat forum!!!
 
They do it to make a thing called MONEY. They will do this as long as people will buy them. And sometimes, they do go to a nice home.
 
LOL 2 posts ahead of me not even 30 seconds before!
 
Just to fuel the fire some more. A frined of mine bought his son a 20 gallon tank. The store owner sold him 2 tiger Oscars. He was told they would do just fine. Some people will do anything for money. :mad2 Fortunetly I hade an empty 70 gallon tank. So now I have Oscars.
 
Like a couple people said, it boils down to money. Honestly though, what do you expect the stores to do? There are some people who have huge tanks and want to keep huge fish so they want to be able to buy them somewhere. The store can't very well examine the tanks of everyone it sells to or refuse to sell to people. It's a problem, but there's really no realistic solution.
 
I don't know about the states, but here in Alberta the big fish are being sold for pretty reasonable prices. The large eels are like $30-$40. The arrowanas (spelling?) are like $60. It's crazy. And they have A LOT of them. Like I used to see one that would sit in a tank forever. But now when they stock these big fish they'll get like 5+ of them and they go fairly quick.

:( :(
 
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