What is the coolest fish you have seen at petsmart or petco

[esoxlucius]

In the uk we have "pets at home". I suppose it's our equivalent of your petco and petsmart stores in the states.

I pop in there for catfood but they do have a fish section. All the usual small community tank type fish in racks of 10g tanks. Nothing to write home about.

But occasionally they do get clown loach in. They'll have a shoal of about thirty 1" fish. The skinniest sickest looking fish you'll ever see, most with ich, in bare tanks with no cover for them at all, scurrying around desperate to hide. I just want to buy the lot just to give them a good home but they're asking like £10 apiece for these little sorrowful guys.

It's no wonder these big stores get bad press in the hobby.

 

[Hendre]

In the uk we have "pets at home". I suppose it's our equivalent of your petco and petsmart stores in the states.

I pop in there for catfood but they do have a fish section. All the usual small community tank type fish in racks of 10g tanks. Nothing to write home about.

But occasionally they do get clown loach in. They'll have a shoal of about thirty 1" fish. The skinniest sickest looking fish you'll ever see, most with ich, in bare tanks with no cover for them at all, scurrying around desperate to hide. I just want to buy the lot just to give them a good home but they're asking like £10 apiece for these little sorrowful guys.

It's no wonder these big stores get bad press in the hobby.

Our local chain store is similar. Bigger tanks, but insanely heavy stocking of all sorts of fish. Rarest I have seen was a Tiger shovelnose that someone probably gave in, and a small Motoro ray in a tank that could not have been bigger than 40 gallons, plus whatever shared sumping there was. The ray was being nibbled on by a bunch of platies, poor thing.

This same place got busted with Snakehead... Ouch.

 

[tlindsey]

Our local chain store is similar. Bigger tanks, but insanely heavy stocking of all sorts of fish. Rarest I have seen was a Tiger shovelnose that someone probably gave in, and a small Motoro ray in a tank that could not have been bigger than 40 gallons, plus whatever shared sumping there was. The ray was being nibbled on by a bunch of platies, poor thing.

This same place got busted with Snakehead... Ouch.

Are African Snakehead banned ?

 

[Hendre]

I believe so, and I am fine with that. Not going to risk having shady importers bring Channa in under Parachanna name..

 

[james99]

The Petco near me had a pink tail chalceus in once. If I had the tank space I would have got it. Haven't seen anything cool since. The pet supermarket gets oddballs from time to time, I've seen gar, polleni, scats, monos, filament barbs and thorichthys ellioti, just to name a few.

 

[TwoHedWlf]

Don't remember if it was a Petsmart or a Petco, but I saw a blue spotted ray in one. Mostly it was all the cool stuff like various FW shrimp.

 

[tlindsey]

Don't remember if it was a Petsmart or a Petco, but I saw a blue spotted ray in one. Mostly it was all the cool stuff like various FW shrimp.

Wow haven't seen a Blue Spot Ray in yrs had to be Petco because Petsmart don't sell saltwater fish.

 

[fishhead0103666]

It would appear as though my petco is special as we get most of the stuff mentioned in often

 

[crocoyes7]

From my personal experience, Petco has been better than petsmart. ... Petsmart also doesn't have shrimp or snails or many things needed to care for them and most fish such as driftwood. The fish at Petsmart seem to be stocked better, but I have also seen much, much more deaths in the tanks at Petsmart than Petco

vidmate

 

[Ogertron3000]

We have something called petbarn here, it's pretty bad for fish but some of the country stores seem a bit better. Generally goldfish and a very basic range of tropical. I've never seen anything even close to being rare or unusual in them , I'd be surprised to even see a GT or firemouths occasionally. Usually they have a bunch of empty tanks and the rest filled with boring unhealthy looking tetras and guppies.
The owner of the whole business is on a tv show where you go and pitch a business idea to him and a few other rich entrepreneur, if they lie them they invest.. In my daydreams I'm tempted to contact him and see if he will hire me as a national aquarium manager for $500K per year!
It's worth a try, if they did it properly they could really take over the local aquarium trade and their buying power would be incredible so they could get prices down. As it stands no one with even the slightest knowledge of fish would ever buy anything there.