Quote:
Originally Posted by waynephinney
Or fish that will become too large for the tank without having any plans to get a bigger tank down the road.
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Hi, newbie here, just surfing around and commenting here and there. Your post and a couple of the others taken together were something I learned early. I was looking to stock a new tank and went to a local big box store (I guess we can't name names). I had a 13 gal tank and absolutely fell in love with black finned sharks. Asked the clerk if and how many I could put in my tank. They told me six. Well, to be on the safe side, since they also told me I could put four goldies in a 13 gal tank, hubby and I opted for four sharks instead of six. Brought them home and only THEN did I decide to do research. Glad I did. Found out they need 70 gals or more! Although I would love to have a large tank in the future, I had no immediate plans for one. Would be cruel to keep such large fish in a little tank with the hopes that
maybe, someday I'd have a larger tank. Thankfully we were able to return them. But not without a lot of heartache. I really fell in love with them and wanted to keep them. It was also heart breaking to realize that someone else would come along after me, be given the same wrong information, buy the sharks, maybe not do the research and keep them in such cramped quarters only to die a horrible or at least an early death.
So, yes the moral of the story is: Don't believe what the clerks tell you, do your research FIRST and as you said, don't buy fish that will grow large without a plan to have a larger tank down the road.