Sounds very common to me, you're not alone
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BTW thats a nice lookin 1911 in your avatar bomber
Am I alone on this or is it much more common???
- Thread starter awesomecichlid
- Start date
+1
BTW thats a nice lookin 1911 in your avatar bomber
i have the same checklist, but i do not hold myself to the check list. I have bought, knowingly, sick fish with the idea that i can get them healthy and get a nice fish cheaper. I wouldnt recommend that as you are obviously bringing home disease. I dont ask to see if the fish is eating if it passes the checklist. I do ask to feed the fish if i am buying a sensitive fish such as a baby arowana. There are a few lfs that I know and trust and I take their word for it when they say the fish is eating. the employees also know me well and dont ask questions when I ask for something out of the ordinary like that. Then there are other stores like Petco that simply stare blankly before saying "we already fed them or we have a feeding routine". If they cant help you make sure thats the animal for you, dont buy the fish. Its also a good check of employee knowledge. The ones that have been around awhile and are familiar with fish dont find it wierd when the question about feeding comes up.
I mainly do this with plecos. My lfs tended to get in rare plecos in pretty rough shape. And once plecos get a sunken in stomach its hard to get them eating again. So any expensive plecos I make sure they are eating first. Although I now buy them mostly online stop it is now a non issue.
Unless it's an expensive fish, I just look at it. make sure it doesn't have any visable disease (sunken gut, bloat, ick, etc...), and make sure it's swimming properly.
I use a quarantine tank for the first atleast 2 weeks, so I can usually nurse a sick one back to health, and/or make sure it's healthy by the time it goes into one of the main tanks. Sometimes, even if it's sick, I'll still get it (especially if it is something I don't normally find and have been looking for, or if I can tell it's going to grow up to be a real nice specimen if I can heal it up).
If it's expensive, I'm going to be a bit more scrutinizing. Going more by your list.
I use a quarantine tank for the first atleast 2 weeks, so I can usually nurse a sick one back to health, and/or make sure it's healthy by the time it goes into one of the main tanks. Sometimes, even if it's sick, I'll still get it (especially if it is something I don't normally find and have been looking for, or if I can tell it's going to grow up to be a real nice specimen if I can heal it up).
If it's expensive, I'm going to be a bit more scrutinizing. Going more by your list.
I only do the feeding thing if its expensive fish that is known to not eat, not eat pelles or only live. as a matter of fact this past weekend i had an incident at a lfs when i asked the stupid teenage employee to feed a eel for me and he rolled his as and said he couldnt. it was $80 And a species known for not eating (ribbon) But they said it came from a customer and it was nice and chunky so i figured it might be eating. long story long lol....he refused and missed a possible sale cause of it. another employee that usualy helps us that overheard said he didnt understand why the guy didtn do it. that he would have.
Yeah, I had that happen to me when an employee of a petstore chain told me he did not understand why I asked this even after I explained it. We are talking about the same people who stay huddled at the front counter instead of checking tanks for fish that have died or even clean a damn tank. I mean part of selling fish in a store I would imagine is part presentation.
That's what happens when these chain stores get cheap and uneducated help. I am sorry if I sound mad but I have had way to many bad experiences in the past.
For 50 bucks for a discus, I make sure that the dang thing is healthy as possible before I bring it home. Thats alot of money for a college student like me aha.
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I will observe them and tend to ask how long they have been in the store. I have never asked them to be fed. This seems unreasonable to me knowing how the stores will feed all of the fish at a certain time. This means even if one customer asks for the tank to bed fed( we know how hard it is feed just one fish), that tank could easily be overfeed.
