thing fish
Aquarium Advice Freak
Okay, I am looking for ideas.
I am a school teacher M-F. Paying a mortgage and living alone makes my money go pretty quickly. So, I applied for a job at a local, big chain pet store; I am not going to name it, but I bet you could guess.
Anyway, they hired me as an aquatic specialist and have given me control of the fish department, as there are not a lot of people there with any experience.
Before I went in for the interview, I took a hard look at all their tanks and took a lot of mental notes. Frankly, the place has a lot of issues and I am kind of excited to go in there and fix it up.
The first order of business will be to put a stop to sales from one group of 12 tanks. The way they are set up, the tanks share water in groups of 12. This one group of 12 had ich as well as a fish with a fungal infection. I checked their water test results, and they showed zero across the board, which is very unlikely. They are still selling fish from these 12 tanks and not treating!!
Aside from fixing the current issues, I want to come up with ideas/suggestions for improving the department. What would you like to see at a chain store?
A couple things I am planning to do so far are: refuse sales of fish that are not appropriate for the customer's tank, educate people on how to cycle their tank and what that means, and suggest quality products.
I also have a couple other ideas. I want to keep a tank for seeded media. This would likely entail a perpetual fishless cycle and running a lot of ammonia through an empty tank and maintaining a huge bacteria colony. Then squeezing out media into bags for people starting off.
Another idea I have is to try to improve the quality of life for the Bettas. They have a large display of them, all in tiny plastic bowls. Some of them have been there for a long time. I would like to reduce the number of Bettas they keep in the store. I also would like to set up a couple of tanks as displays, examples of happy-Betta setups.
I am not really sure how much I will be allowed to do. I was only offered the job today and have not begun working there, yet...but I am hopeful that they will give me some freedom to do good work. If they don't, then I will just quit. That is the beauty of a job that I do not really need.
Anyway, sorry for the long post. Please do offer suggestions on what you would like to see the big chain stores do differently.
I am a school teacher M-F. Paying a mortgage and living alone makes my money go pretty quickly. So, I applied for a job at a local, big chain pet store; I am not going to name it, but I bet you could guess.
Anyway, they hired me as an aquatic specialist and have given me control of the fish department, as there are not a lot of people there with any experience.
Before I went in for the interview, I took a hard look at all their tanks and took a lot of mental notes. Frankly, the place has a lot of issues and I am kind of excited to go in there and fix it up.
The first order of business will be to put a stop to sales from one group of 12 tanks. The way they are set up, the tanks share water in groups of 12. This one group of 12 had ich as well as a fish with a fungal infection. I checked their water test results, and they showed zero across the board, which is very unlikely. They are still selling fish from these 12 tanks and not treating!!
Aside from fixing the current issues, I want to come up with ideas/suggestions for improving the department. What would you like to see at a chain store?
A couple things I am planning to do so far are: refuse sales of fish that are not appropriate for the customer's tank, educate people on how to cycle their tank and what that means, and suggest quality products.
I also have a couple other ideas. I want to keep a tank for seeded media. This would likely entail a perpetual fishless cycle and running a lot of ammonia through an empty tank and maintaining a huge bacteria colony. Then squeezing out media into bags for people starting off.
Another idea I have is to try to improve the quality of life for the Bettas. They have a large display of them, all in tiny plastic bowls. Some of them have been there for a long time. I would like to reduce the number of Bettas they keep in the store. I also would like to set up a couple of tanks as displays, examples of happy-Betta setups.
I am not really sure how much I will be allowed to do. I was only offered the job today and have not begun working there, yet...but I am hopeful that they will give me some freedom to do good work. If they don't, then I will just quit. That is the beauty of a job that I do not really need.
Anyway, sorry for the long post. Please do offer suggestions on what you would like to see the big chain stores do differently.