Petsmart- why do I keep going there!?

watts300

And that reminds me of a brief conversation I had with a Catholic friend of mine a few days ago. I asked if he wanted to go have sushi on Friday (which is now today, Good Friday). He commented on it being okay because he can't otherwise eat any other meat.

I then inquired about Lent.. etc.. etc... without either of us looking it up, we agreed that other animals' meat is sacrificed while fish/seafood is not because the Apostles were fishermen.

jr.masterbreeder

I have to agree with the earlier post about the individual stores.
I've lived in 3 different states and never had a problem with petsmart,
The knowledge does lack a bit, but I'll apply at my local one s soon as I turn 17... (Dec 13th)
I've been keeping fish for 5 years now...
All the way from Guppies to Cichlids which is what I'm on right now.
I do also dare to say that I've had every fish petsmart has carried in the past 4 1/2-5 years...
I've moved so many times out of state.
My parents refused to move the fish also...
I just gave them to local "ma&pa" stores of great quality.

froglady

Good for you. maybe they will take better care of their fish. Ive seen terrible conditions at walmart. fish dieing. and problems, they finally stopped selling at that walmart. I think people should be trained on how to care for tropical fish of any kind.

dramaqueen

It aggravates me that petstore employees tell people its ok to put a male and female betta together in a gallon bowl.

RATTIE

At the petsmart by me an employe told some one that they could breed Bettas in a one gallon tank they also sell cages that are way to small and food that has weed killer in it but they take better care of the animals then any of the smaller pet stores by me.

dramaqueen

How can you raise hundreds of fry in a one gallon container??

mwalk90

I was just at petsmart about an hour ago, I asked the employee in the fish department why one of the jack dempsys was black and gray and he responded "Who knows, fish are weird."

Arkamaic

ROFL!

But my local Petsmart isn't too bad. There is a guy there who actually knows what he is talking about, I overheard him talkin about the nitrogen cycle to a kid getting his first tank, and he was right about it.

Solarfall

I actually work at Petco, and I've recently undertaken the fish department since the other guy left. And it was a massive undertaking.

What a lot of people don't realize is how hard it really is to maintain this many fish with the supplies we're given. We have no quarentine tanks, inadaquate store use food, inadequate means of treating illnesses, and abyssmally overcrowded tanks. Not to mention our protein skimmers don't even work and WE DON'T EVEN HAVE A FREAKING RO UNIT!!! This is corperate America at work for you. My hands are pretty much tied when saltwater gets ick, which is often. With no QT tanks I'm left to do low-salinity "dips" with specimen cups contantly which presents a whole new array of problems itself. Our store manager couldn't even help me out if he wanted to, this is all BS from the higher-ups. We are literally screwed.

That doesn't mean our department isn't well-kept, but it takes absolutely every single one of my 35 hours or so in a workweek to keep them alive. Seriously, the corperate managers cut us no breaks as far as resources. I'm constantly juggling between sick fish, helping customers, keeping my department clean and organized, doing water changes, and a multitude of other issues.

Another thing people don't realize is that most of the employees at a place like Petco or Petsmart are barely making more than minimum wage, and getting raises is not easy. So hiring a marine biologist at $8.50 an hour is pretty heinous to expect. Any given store is lucky to even have one or two people that have any idea what they're talking about. We have one or two people per type of animal that are great and can explain things well, the rest are basically work horses. And going there when one of those people are there is a hit-or-miss. Luckily for our Petco, our old fish guy was suffering economic problems and was forced to get a job there. He made aquatics into a brand new department and knew anything our customers could've needed to know. We were told we had one of the best aquatic departments in the entire company, actually. But now I'm maintaining everything and it's beyond brutal. This is around 1260 gallons in fish tanks (including sumps) with equipment that isn't up date.

All I'm saying is, don't hate the individual store. Hate the company as a whole. I personally think fish stores should be kept seperate from regular pet stores, because there is a lot more to know and a lot more maintainence neccesary for fish than hamsters or snakes.