petco vs lfs

Unrulyevil

I got petco by my house and..... they dont know anything about the plants... they dont know anything about the fish.... but they do have fish and plants and tanks and everything you need so..... I guess they are ok

Everything else.... pick up a good aquarium book and read up!

Daz

Petsmart are good on dry goods, but all there fish are done through franchise in the UK, so they dont get the degree of care they require. Bonuses are always invovled, most staff see the £ signs and thats it, but I hastened to add not all staff are the same.

beetlebz

the nice thing about a store like petco is.. chances are they got it. not fish, necessarily, but other things be it fish food, ferret food, a new whizzy whatsit for this or that, an elephant (just seeing if youre still paying attention) or medications.

I can go into petco and pick out what I want.. because as was stated before you cant really trust the knowledge of the employees. I have to rely on myself to do the research ( Forum Guys n Gals! ) before I go whipping out the plastic :)


on a side note there is one local LFS (really really stores, small chain) that we have here in the mall. I only go in there because they have a good assortment of tetras (if nothing else), puppies to play with, and ONE girl who knows what she is talking about. That makes all the difference in the world to me... knowledgeable staffing. She is also adorable and thus WAY out of my leauge, but im still madly in love *sigh* lol!

but seriously though, look around for yourself. you will find that pet co/smart, your LFS, and online retailers will all fill a role for you if you spend the time to appriciate the strong points of each :)

mHeinitz57

I havnt read everyone's post on this but I have worked at both petco and petsmart in the past and the best advice I have for you is to become educated yourself. Not to boast but I consider myself pretty knowledgable about fish and I have worked with some brilliant fish people at both stores. I have also worked with some complete idiots at both stores who make up information and just try to sound confident even though they don't know what they are talking about. I've worked in stores that had illness problems and i've worked in stores that have nearly perfect fish selections at all times. On the flip side, i've been to LFS stores that were very helpful but i've also seen people who don't know what they are talking about there. I generally try to test them with certain questions just to see if they know what they are talking about or if they just want to sell me stuff. As far as the guaruntee issue, you can pretty much get away with anything at petco or petsmart if you talk to a manager. I've seen people not even have a receipt or a dead fish and get money back, lol. LIke I said before though, become self educated so you know what you are looking for. If you find a store that is helpful, stick with it.

reverendred

haha testing the staff......

at my local LFS i tend to ask questions then give them the answers because i dont get the answers that i have read up on. the only one there that really knows what is going on is the owner. the rest i have little faith in.

Andyandsue

Not to beat a dead horse here, but I just got back from PetSmart. It was close to closing time so I went to the fish department. I didn't want to waste time, so I asked the girl who works there if she could help me locate a sponge filter for my fry. She had no idea what I was talking about. She told me about a net or a plastic breeder for fry (duh). I then asked her if she could help me find an airstone for the fry tank. I wanted something that maybe wasn't very "bubbly". I saw a stone that said "diffuser" and common sense told me it would diffuse the air, so the odds are it would be more gentle than a regular air stone. It was also a little more expensive. She had no idea what the difference was in the stones either.

I have seen this girl before taking care of and selling fish so I know she is a regular in this department.

I ended up buying the net breeder (I have a plastic one) and 3 different air stones just for my own knowledge. I told her I'd come back and let her know what the difference is.

My rant is finished. Thank you.

mHeinitz57

haha its funny because I went into my old work the other day (petsmart) and overheard a lady asking one of the employees about some filter parts. The employee was stumped so I had to take over even though I dont work there anymore. At petsmart the people in the fish department are "pet care specialists" meaning they handle fish, birds, reptiles and small animals. Usually each employee has one area of interest though that they know more about. For instance, I loved helping people with fish but when it came to birds, I knew nothing. I'm sure there is some bird forum somewhere that is complaining about me, lol. In my opinion its not fair to say that petco or petsmart or any store is bad based on certain experiences. My advice is to find an expert or group of experts that you trust and continue to go back to them. They may be at a large chain store or a small mom and pop store. I've even given out my email to customers to let them contact me when im not working. Overall you will probably find more experts at an independant fish store because obviously they are interested in fish if they work there.

jones57742

or an on-line fish club which is 1st Class such as FF!

TR

fish_4_all

Well it all comes down to this. If we want everyone to be an expert then we better be willing to pay the price for it. Fill Petsmart, Petco, Walmart and all the other wholesale bulk low price stores with people who are making $35 an hour and you will pay as much if not more for per supplies and everything else.

If the fish aren't healthy, don't buy them but don't knock a place Like Petco or Petsmart if you can get 5 healthy ciclids from them even though they couldn't even tell you they were mouth brooders.

I can't tell someone on the forum how to care for a knife fish, dragon fish, baby whale, anything living in salt water and many other aspects of aquariums including sumps and wet dry filters. Does this mean I don't deserve the respect for the things I do know? How many of us out there can actually be given a random list of 100 fish and tell someone exactly how big they get, what they eat, what size tank they need, are they brachish, are they aggressive, etc.

Like I said, I belong to the forum because I know where to get advice so I make the right decision. If I had a Petsmart or Petco close enough I would buy any HEALTHY fish from them that saved me a couple $$ over my LFS. I would buy a 40 gallon for $40 because my LFS wants $120. I would buy 500ml Excel from them for $8 because my LFS wants $22. Matter of fact, I would not have to settle for 10 gallon tanks right now if I had one close to me and if Wal-Marts fish were healthier and didn't have ich so often I would have dragon fish even though the employees couldn't tell me what they ate!

After all, we don't shop Wal-Mart for housing and other items because they can tell us what the material is on the favorite lounge chair and what the thread count it. We shop for price, period. If we always shopped for selection, expertise or any other aspect normally found at a custom store for anything a chain store sold then the chain store wouldn't exist, would it!?

mHeinitz57

awesome point, thats why I said it really is up to us to become educated. I can't stand when I would have customers come in and had no interest in learning about how to care for fish, they just wanted to buy the stuff and everything would be fine. On the other end of the spectrum, some people would come in and expected us to be liscenced vets who could perform brain surgery or something, lol.

In response to you Jones, i've often suggested this forum to customers who want to learn more and get great advice...its helped me a lot as well.