Buying fish from Petco...

[Mudslinger14]

Alright, so the only place in town that sells green chromis under $20 is petco.
Now I've looked at some of their tanks and its your general petco. Dead fish in some of them, ich in others, and then tanks with a bunch of fish, coral, anemones and they're all thriving.
So should I go buy a few chromis from them if they look good and there are no other dead fish in the tank, with no signs of ich or anything else? Or is this just a bad idea?
Fast response is appreciated as I'm leaving in a few minutes..

 

[Oughtsix]

Yep, go for it... this is why you have that quarantine tank... so you can acclimate them and observe them for a few days before introducing them to your main tank.

My LFS has much healthier looking fish... but his selection sucks.

 

[Mudslinger14]

Except I don't have a Q-tank.
LOL.
I have no fish in my main tank at the moment though. Just coral.

 

[PSU21Reef]

If it's anything like the petco's that i go to, all of the tanks are plumbed together so most likely all of their fish have ich. They also have no return or refund policy for saltwater fish so even if it dies within an hour, it's your loss. I've never bought saltwater fish from them and never would. The only reason anything is probably thriving is because it is too new to the store to have had time to die yet. I'd look elsewhere personally.

 

[Oughtsix]

If you have no fish then your exposure is minimal... (I know nothing about salt water setups so I might be dead wrong here).

I guess a quarantine tank is a much bigger investment for the saltwater world.

I have bought fish from Petco in the past and I have never had any problems with them. I have seen some pretty bad (fuzzy fish) tanks there though and passed on purchasing fish from healthier looking tanks.