petsmart...

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The midwest is covered with Petsmart stores and I've been to many of them. The quality of life for the animals vs. knowledge of the employees varies from store to store. I'm not going to give Petsmart an F in every category because they atleast have the max size of the fish they sell printed on those little profiles under each tank. I'm REALLY glad they don't sell SW fish. That would be a disaster!

My biggest beef is that they follow the classic form of big cooperations by paying their employees next to squat and threaten to fire them if any talk of forming a union comes up. My sister has been working at a local PS for about 8 years and is afraid of being fired because she now makes a whopping $9 an hour that gets stripped down even more after taxes. I have 3 relatives who work in two different Petsmarts near me and I'm not surprised to hear that Petsmart cares more about the numbers than they do the livestock and the people who sell them.
 
I work at Petsmart, while in college, and it was very funny that after getting hired on they found out i was majoring in Zoology and new a good deal about fish, so they made me fish specialist. Which sucks for me because everytime there is fish question, whether i am working or not i get a call to help them out. They train there employees very well, and our fish wall and department got an "A" from our reginal manager last week, for keeping fish death down, clean tanks, and excellent advice. I have people scrubbing tanks and reading up on fish, with each employee learning about a different group of fish so they can help out more. The Petco near us has i think 20-30 tanks, never any healthy fish and they cant keep there salt-water fish alive. There are 3 LFS around, one of which they guy has no filtration on his tanks :WHOA: , and the other 2 are decent. One is in a bad location and the other is just flat out to expenive for most folks. People always come in and say we have the best selection of fish in the area, and i take that as a personal compliment. I would have loved to have a petsmart around when i first started keeping fish 15 years ago, instead of going to wal-mart to get fish that were miss treated.

So please dont say all PetSmarts' suck because that siply isnt true. If you want to bash yours thats fine. But i wanted to work there so i could help people get the right fish for there aquarium and make sure that they were healthy fish. Bashing all PetSmarts is like bashing me in the face and my employees and all the employees that actually no what they are doing and want to see the fish hobby continue long after we go to "swim with the fishes"
P.S. One of the LFS even buys his community and semi-aggressive fish from us then breeds them at his store.
 
loach43 said:
cares more about the numbers than they do the livestock and the people who sell them.
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Tell me about it :swear:. A rich corporation like petco, and they send me home early on some days because they arent making enough payroll to cover me working there. Which is absolute :bs:
 
The wal-mart here isn't that bad, but their oscars suck... I do like their koi, and they were even selling Blue Channel Catfish.. if you have seen the one here in El Paso at the zoo, you'd know how large they get.. And it was with an arowana, a freshwater stingray, and some other fish I don't remember.

I have been going to the same petsmart here for atleast 5-6 years, one of the guys that work there owns a saltwater tank, so I know he is knowledgeable. and this one person who cleans the tanks, she knows quite a lot about fish and fun to talk with.
 
Howdy,

a fish store greatly depends on its employees. On average (but there are exceptions), employees in a privately owned store are more concerned about the animals they sell. Indeed, in the Kansas City metropolitan area, I have not been able to find a good PetsMart or PetCo.

ballsmcgee1234 said:
But we got that stupid $5 coupon and decided we should get a couple more guppies
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Gotta love those coupons. I spent my $5 on frozen brine shrimp, I ended up paying $ 0.79 for a 16 oz pack. :thumbsup: That's not a bad price :D Why you feel the need to spend them on fish if they're not healthy is beyond me. I think they have a return policy, though, don't they? Bag the dead fish up, bring them a sample of your water and get fish food instead of new guppies.

HarleyK
 
There's no petsmart in hawaii but when i visited a few on the mainland, i never saw any fish of interest. They only carry cheap fish that you will find anywhere you go as well as it is overpriced. The product selection, I found out too is not very good. If you want to find fish worth and quality products while you should seek a smaller specialty store, usually people who work there tend to be more knowledgable too. (although i'm sure that petsmart has a few knowledgable people here and there.)
 
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