Hello; So if I buy a fish and keep it in my tanks under conditions that the pet store has no control over, I can at some point just take it back. The disease issue alone could be a negative. A fish shop would also have to have a number of cycled tanks on hand at all times with the capacity to take in returned fish, another negative to staying in business.
I get the point that people buy fish they do not have the capacity to keep and house properly. Sometimes they do not know what they are getting into and later find a fish is outgrowing their tanks.
However, I have read many posts where someone buys a young fish that they know will outgrow their current tank/s with the hope they will have bigger tanks by the time it grows. My take is this rarely works out.
In over fifty years of fish keeping I have not returned a fish I purchased. I have made some poor choices and had to deal with them. I did take a large common pleco to a fish store once. A neighbor lost his house and it was take in the fish or kill it. I just did not have the space to keep it for long.
I no longer buy fish without some prior knowledge as to the tank size and conditions required. It is not the fish shop that is responsible for my decisions. As you can likely tell, I strongly disagree with this notion you propose.
When you put a fish in a tank, you confine a fishs swimming room yes. But when you clip the wings of a bird, you take away its way of transportation completly, and you force it to walk, or sit on a stick all day. For me that is different, and would be like putting a 20" fish in a 20" Width tank, or clipping the fins off a fish and forcing it to just get carried by the stream.... For me its very different.
