HAHAHA Your killin me petsmart

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Like I said I cant say for all other petsmart but I am shocked to hear this about petsmart! My store, at least, is crazy about keeping our fish as healthy as possible. Perhaps it is because our pet care manager is a marine biologist who once owned two fish stores her self, I dont know.

Tom, you do know that ick is ALWAYS in your aquarium, its just when your fish is stressed and its immune system is down is when the ich can develop on the fish(only part of ich's life cycle is on a fish the rest is in your water and gravel, that is why when you turn up the heat it cures the ich fast because it speeds up its cycle and detaches from the fish). Also, I have been there for two months and I have yet to see ich on a fish and that is no joke! We get fungus on neons and tiger barbs occasionally but that is about it.

Again, I am not defending all other petsmarts b/c I have never been to them, but I am really amazed by these comments b/c our fish selection and health in general is just as good if not better then a majority of our LFS!
 
Some PetSmarts are quality, it just depends on the staff..

Just think, I USED to work at PetSmart.. now granted, you could of asked several employees about African Cichlids, and they would have no clue.. but atleast I trained them well enough to come find me for specific questions..

After talking to me a few times, I had a number of return customers that came just to talk about rare fish that PetSmart didn't carry.. Heck, I was even giving advice for all the other LFS who had poor customer service. I would have people each day coming in asking me about rays and puffers, while the other LFS was full of ill advice..

I would say 90%+ of the corporate pet places have a bad rep, but once in a while, if you find the right person, you can find a wealth of information coming from the chain stores..
 
I see a lot of Petcos around where I live. I've only seen 1 Petsmart and it happens to be about 7 miles away. There fish department employees are a bunch of idiots. I once got a RTC for $1.62 because the guy sold it to me as a cory that he said can get as big as a common pleco at 6." :screwy: A few weeks ago some guy told me that Convicts can also be mouth brooders :screwy:
 
The sad part is, most (not all) fish stores or pet shops dont really care if the fish lives, it's a lot more business/ money when people keep coming in every other week to replace the dead fish, It's the sad truth, they don't make as much money if people buy 1 feeder goldfish take great care of it ,have it for 20 -30 years and only come in to buy fish food once in a while, the stores just want to move "merchandise" I see it all the time, this is especially "good "business (replacing dead fish every other week) for saltwater fish, I see the same thing happen when im at lfs's ," oh my fish died,this one ate that one, or " I had one of these ,one of those" all dead, sorry I just saw this today and It pissed me off!! :swear: :( :eek:
 
A store,'chain' store at that, trying to make money, get out of here???? Come on folks, when it comes to buying fish, do the research and don't buy sick fish from sickly tanks. It's easy really. I have talked more than a few people out of buying an oscar for a 10 gallon community tank, I did it myself so I try to save people the hassle. I knew they got big and messy and had "plans" for a bigger tank but reality hit and I'm all the wiser now.

I've had petsmart fish for years and fish from "reputable dealers" die in a week. Guppies get massive and oscars are community fish, believe what you want but be prepared to face the truth. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH, and don't believe any one source look around.....oooh the pretty colors.
 
big e, I dont think what you said applies to petsmart because they have a 14 day no questions asked garuntee! If they jsut wanted customers to come back and buy more fish once theirs died I dont think it would have a 14 day garuntee.
 
That 14 day guarantee says that I have to dig the dead fish out of my tank and bring it in with a water sample and the original receipt. Then they get to poke at the dead fish, test my water and then decide if it they think it was your tank or their fish that caused the death. In theory it doesn’t sound that bad but when is the last time you kept every receipt and was willing to carry a dead animal back into a pet store so they can critique you. I just couldn’t bring myself to it, it sounds so disrespectful to the fish. I try to buy as much as possible from LFS but I am guilty of breaking down and falling for the price difference every now and then. Although I do really like the general manager that is in charge of the Petsmart store near me, he is very intelligent and at least tries to know a little about everything. I usually go to him when i'm there instead of the other employees that admittedly have never had pet fish.
 
The big problem i see is thaif you try to correct them when they say something stupid, thats the end of the help, they walk away from you or treat you like your a big fish nerd. So best is to avoid those places unles you have to go there for emergency or there is a must have fish that they dont realize what it is.
 
Casey Norris said:
That 14 day guarantee says that I have to dig the dead fish out of my tank and bring it in with a water sample and the original receipt. Then they get to poke at the dead fish, test my water and then decide if it they think it was your tank or their fish that caused the death. In theory it doesn’t sound that bad but when is the last time you kept every receipt and was willing to carry a dead animal back into a pet store so they can critique you. I just couldn’t bring myself to it, it sounds so disrespectful to the fish. I try to buy as much as possible from LFS but I am guilty of breaking down and falling for the price difference every now and then. Although I do really like the general manager that is in charge of the Petsmart store near me, he is very intelligent and at least tries to know a little about everything. I usually go to him when i'm there instead of the other employees that admittedly have never had pet fish.
If you think that’s bad. If you return a (healthy) fish purchased at wall-mart they ask no question they just hand you your money back and kill the fish. I have seen it happen.
 
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