Interesting trip to Petco today....

D

dbzguy

AC Members
Jan 24, 2005
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San Diego
So I was there checking on some supplies and was looking at their stock of fish. When I came across one of the tanks holding about 30 Neon Tetras and something caught my eye so I looked closer and was like oh wow, all the fish had full blown Ick!!! I mean it was gnarly, I have never seen an infection on fish that bad before....

So I saw one of the fish clerks and was like "hey bro, did you know that all these fish have Ick? He said " I do now" and turned the price sign on the tank backwards and said thanks for letting me know... I said sure no problem guy and as I was leaving he said " dont worry, I have a UV sterilizer that will knock it out in a day or so" He also said something about it being a new batch and its common for that to happen..... I said oh ok and left.....
 
That's why I buy my fish at the Mom and Pop fish shops instead of box stores! You still run into dumb***es, but the tanks usually are cleaner and the fish are healthier. Worth an extra buck or two for a fish.
 
There is a tank at my closest Petsmart that usually houses glowlight tetras and there are always some fish with ick or fin rot in that tank every time I go in there!
 
I had a similer experiance at petco, they had a clownfish that was on its side flapping its fin at the bottom and all the other fish had Ick/Ich (whatever it is with the white dots) REALLY bad, like this one tang was abosolutly COVERED in it, and they were still selling them!!!! And they had bettas in little tiny containers all over the store! like 50 or so in what looked liked tubberware containers, im surprized they could even BREATHE! Overall my trip to petco was very sad. I thought that just the Petco up here wazs bad, guess im wrong :(
 
PetSmart always tells me that sick or dead fish there are just stressed because they came in the new shipment, but if I show interest in a fish, he's been there for a while so "we know he's healthy"
 
fish keeping in America must be pretty bad, because in Australia we don't really have big chain pet stores, so the tanks are always clean, fish are well fed, the bettas are kept in 1g jars, i think ive only seen one case of ich at any of the pet stores where i live.
 
Although i love 300km away, there is a pet store (Pets Unlimited) in halifax, maybe 80 FW tanks and a 15 SW tanks... never seen a dead fish, not even with their discus, only thing ive ever seen was some fungus (or whatever it is that makes cm long white things stick out of them!) on 3 dead Sparkling Gouramies.
 
The smaller stores are getting (or have already been) shut down by the Petsmarts in my area. They just can't lower the prices to the same level and still stay afloat.
 
I have a couple of questions.

1. What will a UV sterilizer do? Will it kill the ich in the water column?

I'm sure it won't do anything for the already infected fish.

2. Do you think think that the employee would have treated the tank (and others that were on that central filter system)?

I would think that since he turned the price sign backwards, maybe he was going to do something about it. If so, I think that's great!
 
I was at petco on weds, I've been stopping in there a lot lately since its close to work to pick up little things as I get ready to fish. I had my eye on some small veiltail angels they had gotten in last week. angels go fast, i thought because the tanks are usualy empty. well, when i checked em out on weds, i noticed that allmost all the angels were gone except a couple of the larger ones and one small one, upon closer inspection, i see no less then five of the small veiltails dead in the tank. their was only one tang and an eel left in the salt section, and many of the other tanks were empty, a few still had dead fish in em. all total i would guess there were about 20 dead fish visible in the tanks. what a waste.
 
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