Picking your Fish Store (for fish purchases)

[fish4phil]

What are you criteria? Or walk away points?

I have 4 stores to choose from:
1) An LFS who sold me neons with Neon Tetra Disease
2) Another LFS that had 3 dead fish in all freshwater tanks on my last visit, and ich in their neon tank though they were treating it with QuickCure (I watched) but refused to sell those fish (a plus)
3) A Petsmart who's tanks and fish look great, except had 5 dead fish on my last visit
4) Another Petsmart who has what looks like algae, Petsmart employee told me it's Cyanobacteria, in most of their tanks, top layer of tanks on most of the gravel, and 1 dead fish

Based on this limited selection, for common fish purchases, which LFS would you go to?

Sent from my mobile aquarium device

 

[Khuligirl93]

I would go with choice #2. I always like to support local businesses over huge chain stores. Plus, even though their fish were sick, they were aware of the problem, attempting to fix it, and refusing to sell the sick fish to customers (3 pluses in my opinion ).

What I look for in fish stores are:
-healthy fish
-variety of fish and availability of less common species
- knowledgable and kind employees
-clean store
-do they have live plants? (My favorite LPS has live plants in all their tanks- they don't sell them because as in the managers words "they're part of our filtration system!")

 

[T1KARMANN]

You should be able to spot a heathy fish no matter what

In the UK a shop is braking the law selling fish from a tank that's being treated

I know it's common practice to bring new fish home then add tank water to the bag then let the fish out

I ALWAY empty the bag into a small tub then add tank water to the tub
Then net the fish out of the tub and put it in the tank
NEVER let shop tank water near your own system