I stand for along time at the fish store picking out fish and making sure they don't have missing tails. I can't believe some of the unhealthy looking fish that are sold at the fish stores. If I go in and they say you can't pick the fish, I walk out. I don't a fish someone else has picked out.
aways examine your fish before buying
- Thread starter fishnutham
- Start date
This is where the lfs has a huge advantage over mega stores like PetSmart,Petco.,etc. In an open system like in the big stores, you have to check not just the tank you are buying from but pretty much any tank in the store. It is all the same water and diseases pass from tank to tank. Most of the smaller lfs have closed systems, at least here in Pennsyltucky.
The local Petco has multple systems that each run a set of 9 tanks so if one has sick fish all 9 are likely to. The other thing many lfs do is to use the same nets for all the tanks without even disinfecting them. A good lfs uses different nets per section and keeps it in a dip of diluted bleach, hydrogen peroxide, or at least methylene blue and rinses it between each use.
I saw (at a rather expensive lfs) an employee pulling out fungused, dying fish with a net, and then using the same unrinsed net catch a cuckoo syndontis ($36.00) to sell. I pointed that out to the buyer who changed his mind.
I was not welcome there anymore.
I saw (at a rather expensive lfs) an employee pulling out fungused, dying fish with a net, and then using the same unrinsed net catch a cuckoo syndontis ($36.00) to sell. I pointed that out to the buyer who changed his mind.
I was not welcome there anymore.
One tough part of choosing healthy fish is when you buy multiples of the same type of fish from a heavily populated tank. I recently bought 20 cardinal tetras from a tank that probably had 300 of them. Needless to say, the lady who was netting them out was not happy with me for nit-picking the quality of every single fish and making her put the ones I didn't want back in the tank.
loach43 said:
have done that before some of the employees are used to me now has it advantages though i usally get a couple extra fish for free when i buy the small guys they like to keep the regulars happy or in my case from complaining
Yes, it's nice to know your fish bagger, otherwise the person netting your fish out might think you're psychotic for being so anal. Little tiny fish in great numbers are a pain to examine at point of sale. Once they get put into a plastic container for examination, they instantly get pale and freaked out. That makes it even more difficult to check their tiny gills, scales, and overall health. I never go fish shopping without my glasses 
Good advice.Always be careful.Im sure my local lfs think Im a pain in the arse so what.I know what a healthy fish looks like, so should they.
I went to an action once and up front a fan tail goldfish was up for auction. I bought him without getting a good look at him and put him in my coldwater aquarium right away, big mistake. My brother who isn't into fish realized right away that that goldfish has ich. I was like oops, too late now. I medicated the tank and lost all of the fish except the fan tail. I realize now that I made so many stupid mistakes but I guess fishkeeping is a learning process.
