2 losses today

[Guest]

yesterday i added 2 female dwarf gourami's bought from the LFS.

Today i woke to a dead male neon blue dwarf gourami and a dead clown loach. Both of which i bought at walmart a couple of weeks ago. They had been quarenteened for a week before i added them, ive been testing the water every day with both aqaurium pharmaceuticals and the test strips. Both tests showed no ammonia or nitrites, Nitrate is between 10-20.

Since it was just the walmart fish im going to blame it on poor handling, since all the fish i have bought from that walmart have died. I have had very few casualties from the LFS because i know they do daily water changes and weekly ich guard in all of their tanks.

Can you see anything else that may have caused this? The fish were otherwise healthy, all i can think is that maybe they got too stressed or the way the guy at walmart was catching them, he was baging them against the side of the tank!

 

[greenmaji]

you need a QT tank.. its good to QT new fish.. two weeks at least.. heat treating them for ick before you put them in your main tank would be even better.. though its not nessasary..
I worked at Meijer, in the pet department no less.lol, and they use a DE filter on there tanks every morning and do weekly 50% water changes.. Im not sure what Walmart does but im sure they have a decent regiment.. Im assuming there stock might not be as strong. though the ones around hear that have strong fish... or most likely they have customers messing with there tanks!!
by the way.. if you dont like how an employee is treating the fish you can tell the management.. and you can ask to catch your own fish.. they will usually let you..

 

[Guest]

My best friend is the pet manager at a local walmart.. They do NOT change the water at all. They do filter it through reverse osmosis with carbon, but that's it. They never change the water, they don't even take the dead fish out half the time.

you need a QT tank.. its good to QT new fish.. two weeks at least.. heat treating them for ick before you put them in your main tank would be even better.. though its not nessasary..

I have a QT tank 10 gallons, I quarenteened them, treated them with salt and heat for a week just to make sure there was no disease. I also added melafix.

 

[Guest]

by the way.. if you dont like how an employee is treating the fish you can tell the management.. and you can ask to catch your own fish.. they will usually let you..

i did ask them.. they said no I will never buy fish from walmart again... ill stick to the LFS.

 

[dax29]

I purchased some sick (ichy) clown loaches at WalMart and kept them in a QT for 3.5 weeks at 89F temp + aquarium salt and very little light. They looked really good when I put them in the tank and they did very well once I put them in the main tank. I don't think buying sick fish is good but at least they didn't die at WalMart and I traded them in eventually at the lfs. I still see them all in the tank he put them in when I traded.

 

[FMJnaX]

Sorry for your lose...

I do NOT trust WalMart fish. For one, they have "Oscars".... about 10 of them (1-2").... all in the little display tank. They don't really look like Oscars, but that's not the point:

1) They don't know their fish (mis-labeled)
2) They don't know their fish (Selling Oscars in the small tank)

I have bought a Betta though.... but it died in about a week.

 

[Kari]

Almost all my fish have come from Wal-Mart, I definately do NOT recommend getting them from there, though. I have to admit, it was my sorrow for the conditions that they were being kept in that first flooded my heart with fishy fever.
I don't know that there's many fish ailments out there that I haven't had to deal with because of the poor/diseased water conditions they'd been kept in, like having half the fish in the tank dead, and nobody taking them out for days on end. Their biggest gf tank was HORRIBLY infested with ich not long ago, several dead fish in the water for days...bettas that I KNOW have sat on the same shelf, in the same bowl, in the same damn water for WEEKS...same INCH of water, at that, if they're lucky.

Sorry for ranting...it was bound to happen sooner or later though. That's why things like this happen:

http://www.petlibrary.com/goldfish/walmart.htm

 

[FMJnaX]

I don't want to go off topic here, but that link you posted Kari is quite nice. I actually prefer one local PetSmart over every LFS in town. They have knowledgable staff that can make it through all beginner and most advanced questions.

 

[Zagz]

My lfs has a 30 day guarantee on all their fish, they require the original receipt and a water sample. They replace all fish that die within that 30 days. I haven't bought any fish from Walmart, I know they are cheaper but I'm sure they don't have any guarantees on their fish do they?

 

[Guest]

walmart guarentees their fish, don't know for how long, but i just got tired of taking them back.

 

[BrianNY]

I'm not getting into the Walmart thing Ashley but I see a few potential problems here.

You must realize that transferring fish from one environment to another creates a certain stress factor by itself. So if the fish arrived just a few days earlier at walmart from the distributor, and you moved them from your QT tank to your main tank in less than 2 weeks, they've been bounced around a bit.

The purpose of a QT is several. It affords you the opportunity to observe the fish for potential problems and allows them to adjust calmly to your water. Treating them with salt can be deadly for the loach, and high heat can be deadly if there is any bacterial infection.

HTH

 

[Guest]

yes, well lesson learned the hard way. I didn't know the salt would hurt the clown loaches The other two are doing great, but i lost my second blue gourami. The two females from the LFS are doing good and so is the Red one I got from Wal Mart. I am NOT buying any more fish from walmart.

Thanks everyone for your help. Next time i will QT for a full two weeks before i transfer them to my big tank. And if i get another clown loach i will not salt treat. Is melafix still ok to put in the QT tank though?

 

[Kari]

Just fyi, for those who might like to know...Wal-Mart's return policy on fish ends after 72 hours, and you better have the receipt to prove the date :?

 

[Andos99]

Wal-mart sucks.....stay away