Big Chain Pet Store Employee, Venting

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Note taken. Maybe not as crucial as i previously beloved then, that's good to know.
 
Note taken. Maybe not as crucial as i previously beloved then, that's good to know.
 
So I have read that pet stores/fish stores feed fish at night because transport on full bellies can cause extra stress. No more than two days later I'm at a local big box and an employee is blasting bloodworms into a saltwater tank to catch some fish (pretty white and black stripped ones). My fiancé asks him why he is feeding them, he replies that it is the only way to catch them. The tank did appear to have an awkward hood/entry point and there were a lot of hiding places in the rock in the tank. Still unsure how I feel about the whole situation, idk if he was just not willing to catch them with skill or if the store really just set Him up for failure with a bad setup or false info maybe.....

I think this is for long distance transportation. Like from the wholesaler or whoever to the stores where they are packaged up and will be in the bags/boxes for 12+ hours. Feeding before will cause them to poop in the bag, fouling the water quicker and creating an unsafe environment. A lot of stores/sites that ship fish to customers will quarantine a fish for 24 hours and not feed them before shipping so that this doesn't happen.
 
I can't recall the source of this comment. I just remember reading it. I can see how a nicely fed fish would be happy. But also I could see transport on a full belly being stressful, I don't like to do much when I'm full :)

The online vendors who ship fish wont feed them before shipping so the chance of the fish pooping is reduced. Poop=ammonia. Ammonia in a small bag with no filtration adds more stress to an already stressed fish. Not quite the same as you picking up a fish at your lfs, and driving it home.
 
The online vendors who ship fish wont feed them before shipping so the chance of the fish pooping is reduced. Poop=ammonia. Ammonia in a small bag with no filtration adds more stress to an already stressed fish. Not quite the same as you picking up a fish at your lfs, and driving it home.

There we go. Thanks for clarifying both of you :)
 
That's makes perfect sense. I was just explaining to my fiancé this discussion and that was her argument/question, ammonia build up in the bag.
 
Yeah, I agree. We feed the fish every morning, not at night.

The bloodworms thing to catch fish? I'm really not sure... it seems like a good way to foul up the water, but the tanks at my store....whoever designed the tanks clearly didn't spend much time trying to catch fish out of them; they are poorly designed.
Some fish are harder to catch than others. If I feel I've had a hard time catching a fish and maybe stressed it, we keep a bottle of stress coat in the bagging area...I just put a few drops in the bag with the fish :)
 
Yeah... Crediting him for the fish you sold him is totally reasonable, but all his fish that you didn't sell him? Nice try.

It's totally common for fish to be carriers where they carry a parasite and are immune to it and show no signs themselves but can pass it on to a tank. Even the best care at a LFS won't catch everything. It's up to the buyer to do a round of QT with parasite treatments prior to adding it to a tank. If you don't do that, you're responsible for the risks to your tank.

I thought so too. Weird thing: I've had a rash of people come in lately for parasite medicine and quarantine tanks. Just today I had two come in; one asked me about good but cheap filters for a QT he needed to run for some sick fish and one was asking about the meds themselves. I've been asking cutomers about the 'source' of the disease and it's about half of them claim the sick fish come from elsewhere, or that didn't add anything to the tank recently. Do you guys find that certain diseases and infections crop up at certain times of the year 0_o?

Could it be people's water quality is getting worse because of rising temps? Whats up???
 
Back
Top Bottom