Hate Petsmart/Petco?? Vent here, and tell me/us why!!

[Tiffi]

I am sure that like any retail environment there are the bad, good and great people that are knowledgable. i give a thumbs up to the Davis store.

That is in fact true. I've seen better and bad chain stores. I guess it all depends on the knowledge of the manager and other employees. Maybe he/she is a fish freek and has some tanks at home.

[DepotFish]

Petsmart by me is great! They feed the fish a variety of proper foods. I've never seen a dirty or way-overstocked tank. Even with the new management (with which the care of small animals went down a tad bit) they are way above other stores.
Petco by me is horrible. The animals are overcrowded. The fishtanks are covered with algea and dead fish are everywhere. The birds and small animals are diseased and malnourished. I spoke to a manager once and he told me off. They gave my sister bad advice once on her rabbits. I don't shop there.
Petsuppliesplus has decent tanks, not overcrowded, but often the fish are sick. They don't know how to take care of their other animals. They feed only cheap crickets to their lizards and being that my sister is a lizard freak I know that half the reptiles in the store cannot survive without vegetables. They even told us that one particular lizard needed crickets when that species is vegetarian.

[DepotFish]

My local hardware store has a small pet section. They have a full-time employee just for the pets. I've never bought fish from them though because the comets are so tiny and for some reason their female betta tank was labeled as not for sale. I do buy cheap supplies from them.
Another local store is very well educated in birds and reptiles, but not in fish. The tanks often have ich and right now the comet tank has a bacterial problem. I got my comet from there, but I won't buy fish from them again. They have cheap supplies though. I'm going to apply for a summer job there.
Just Pets is our fish specialty store. They don't have supplies as their name suggests. They don't have much more than fish either. All of their animals are well taken care of and the owner is a fish enthusiast.

[Jchillin]

In case no one noticed, this thread is three years old. I can imagine some things have improved at PetCo in that time.

[willowthepoet]

i think i'll finally come out and give up my dirty secret.

i work at petsmart. it's not nearly as bad as most of this thread makes it sound. yes, it's a unified system, but there's a UV sterilizer so diseases never spread very far.

none of petsmart's fish are wild caught, which could explain why some of the fish are more expensive there than at the LFS.

petsmart does not, under any circumstances, carry "painted" or otherwise mutated fish, which is more than i can say about any other privately-owned fish place i've been to.

yeah, there are only three people at my store who i would call knowledgable about fish at all (the pet care manager, one other associate and myself) but that's because their starting rate is $6.50 an hour. as a corporation, it's better for them to not pay their workers as much and keep on high school kids than it is to pay a decent amount to have people who know what they're talking about.

we keep our fish the best we can under what we have. the big corporate offices tell us where we have to put all of our fish and we can't do anything about it. if corporate tells us that we have to shove a dozen 4" oscars in a space the size of a 30 gallon tank, we don't have a choice. it's terrible and wrong, but there's nothing we can do without losing our jobs. we do water testing twice a day and the system is built so that it's constantly doing a PWC.

all of the problems we have come from new fish shipments. the worst are the livebearers. every week when we open up our new fish, there's a bag of guppies with some kind of ich or fungus or something, bags full of dead fish, etc.

if we were to only get fish once a month (not plausible because of the quantity of fish that gets sold), you'd rarely find dead ones.

and EVERY fish place has dead fish. there's no way around it. yeah, i think petco is by far the worst place to buy animals, but if you have a clue, petsmart is totally okay. and this is coming from somebody on the inside.


disclaimer: i can only base this on the particular store i work at, the petsmart near you might be totally different, but ours really isn't so bad.

[FriscoTX]

Petco told me, a complete Newb, that I could put a crayfish in my tank with no problems. They said if something happened I could bring him back (clue #1). After he assassinated poor "comet" I took him back (on the recommendation of the cool peeps here). After I told the guy behind the counter what happened, he said, "What did you think was going to happen?" I was quick to tell him that it was his Fish Specialist who recommended the purchase.

I think the stores are fine if you know what you are looking for - but buyer beware if you don't! I had one guy at PetLand look at me with a blank stare when I told him that I was cycling my tank - he said "What do you mean?" I realized that I needed to look elsewhere for advice.

[jcarlilesiu]

I think there is a huge difference between mistreating animals, and unknowledgeable staff. Two of the issues I commonly see arise on this board in regards to these massive corporate pet store chains. Many times the fish that these stores recieve are bulk farm raised, probably lesser quality than some of the lfs, surely not as quality controlled. Once recieved at the store, most stores i have been to look to do "ok" at maintaining their tanks. Because of this huge bulk purchase, you will pay less. Same as buying mass produced partical board furniture at wal-mart rather than at the fancy amish furniture store with solid oak peices.

Also, you are paying for the quality of staff. You pay less because the corporations don't have to spend the overhead in training their staff beyound what is necessary to humanly care for their stock. There is nothing wrong with this... if you want to save a dollar, do the research yourself and then buy your fish there, everybody wins.

I think that if you see something that is inhumane, that is definatly a call for action, however if you are just going to complain about the items i listed above, shop at some exclusive lfs, with very knowledgeable staff, but remember you are going to pay for it.

[Pilot]

I shop at Petco and they have a very knowledgable staff. They often ask me what fish I have in my tank and if I've gone through a cycle before buying new fish. They also tell me if there are going to be any conflicts with certain fish and inform me on how to add fish.

[Ryehard]

I have one Petco in my area that seems to be decent and has knowledgeable staff, but the selection isn't that great. The Petsmart near me is absolutely horrible. The first and only time I tried to buy fish there one was dead by the time the 'specialist' even got it into the bag. It seems like you really have to luck out and have a Petco or Petsmart with someone working there who really cares and knows about fish and unfortunately people like willowthepoet definately do not work at my petsmart. Although it seems like most stores that move into my area go to **** pretty quickly...

[SeymourFRESH]

i think another thing on this whole issue is depending on which petco or petsmart you go to. there are several different ones here in STL, and i've been to a fair share of them...it's about 50/50...half of them are decent, half of them suck

there's an independent pet store specializing in fish that i've gone to for years and recently stopped going there, because it looks like all they do is neglect their fish. kind of frustrating, but nothing i can do there

what's funny about false advertisement on big cats is the fact that the only place where i've seen proper length stated was at petco! everywhere i go they have iridescent cats listed at 8" or 1', but the new petco that opened up here has them advertised at 3' (needless to say, since i used to own one i was pleased to see a corporate store with the proper advertisement listed)