and depending on how good the employees are at your local stores, they may tell you that a bigger tank is needed in the future. one of my local Pmarts is full of idiots (one employee saw me looking at severums and came over and said"these are my favorite!" and then started tapping on the glass. all the fish cowered in fear.) and the other one has a few really great people who are very knowledgable about tank sizes and compatibility, above and beyond the limited training they get.
Shame on Petsmart!
- Thread starter Nabbig2
- Start date
most of the time its corporate. i do work at petsmart and i asked another employee who had been working there longer than me why we could separate the 5 4" oscars in one tank into many different tanks and he was like its against store policy. meaning that some people there know that they should be separated but if some for corporate can in a saw that they were the store managers would get yelled at. as for the tags corporate makes those too. but i myself have refused says of fish like pacu. actually one time someone came in and was like can i get a pacu and i was like what size tank you have and he was like 30 but im getting a bigger soon and i was like unless its in the 500's i wouldnt recommend this fish and he was like well the lady yesterday said it would be ok in a 55 and i was like well she doesnt know what she is talking about. lol
Trajan230;1151940; said:
So you think that a stunted 13" Pacu living in a 55 for 10 years that has had to go through ich, scars, diseases, power outages, bad food, no water changes, is remotely better than spending life in the wild were it can get the chance to live 40+ years, grow to 3 feet and actually have a decent life???
Obviously you couldnt give a f#%ck about fish walfare.
Haha. Last time I was at Petsmart I was talking to one of the guys who seemed semi-knowledgeable about fish. I mentioned if he thinks their care sheets are a little off. And he immediately said what do you mean? So I pointed to the nearest care label thing and showed him the 30 gallon minimum tank size for an oscar. He was like what do you mean, 30 gallons is plenty of room for an adult oscar. I laughed and got my fish and left. Lmao. What a noob.
Oh man...here I go again defending Petsmarts honor.....
Not that this subject hasn't been beaten to death a thousand times over but..... yes the "suggested tank size" is for the fish as a baby. Of course your baby oscar will outgrow that 30 gal in a week... And as far as the adult sizes yes they are inaccurate, no real excuse I'm afraid.
As far as employees go - here's my honest take on the "idiot employees" at petsmart. The real sad thing about this whole situation is if you all had the chance to read the training materials we are all supposed to go through...its actually very accurate and up-to-date (except the water change suggestions, imo). Unfortunately way too many associates seem to forget the training and policies and start just repeating what they here from other associates and even customers. Lets face it 95% of people believe its a fact that fish "grow to the size of thier tank." It's frustrating...but seriously Petsmart does put a lot of effort into training employees.
And seriously I don't want to get too terribly negative but are you all expecting people getting paid a cut above minimum wage to be marine biologists?
In my experience the fish knowledge really varies by store. For every couple "idiot high school kids" there is ussually at least one reasonably knowledgable hobbyist. Frankly - I've noticed the same thing at ALL fish stores. Petsmart gets a lot of bad press but seriously I've heard plenty of "real" fish store employees at the "serious" fish stores in my area spouting off blatantly false information. And at the same time, I've met a lot of people in my company who are serious dedicated fishkeepers (myself for example).
So yeah...off my soapbox now.
Not that this subject hasn't been beaten to death a thousand times over but..... yes the "suggested tank size" is for the fish as a baby. Of course your baby oscar will outgrow that 30 gal in a week... And as far as the adult sizes yes they are inaccurate, no real excuse I'm afraid.
As far as employees go - here's my honest take on the "idiot employees" at petsmart. The real sad thing about this whole situation is if you all had the chance to read the training materials we are all supposed to go through...its actually very accurate and up-to-date (except the water change suggestions, imo). Unfortunately way too many associates seem to forget the training and policies and start just repeating what they here from other associates and even customers. Lets face it 95% of people believe its a fact that fish "grow to the size of thier tank." It's frustrating...but seriously Petsmart does put a lot of effort into training employees.
And seriously I don't want to get too terribly negative but are you all expecting people getting paid a cut above minimum wage to be marine biologists?
In my experience the fish knowledge really varies by store. For every couple "idiot high school kids" there is ussually at least one reasonably knowledgable hobbyist. Frankly - I've noticed the same thing at ALL fish stores. Petsmart gets a lot of bad press but seriously I've heard plenty of "real" fish store employees at the "serious" fish stores in my area spouting off blatantly false information. And at the same time, I've met a lot of people in my company who are serious dedicated fishkeepers (myself for example
).So yeah...off my soapbox now.
