I will NEVER buy fish or Hardware from PetLand again

[William]

To start the morning off, I took a jaunt down to the local PetLand to pick up a heater for my Betta Tank.

While I'm in there I look around, decide not to get the heater cause its to expensive [ 30 bucks for a 50watt ] Pick up a can of Shrimp Pellets instead and go to look at the fish.


They've had ich in their tank for the past MONTH!, So I nearly fainted when i saw no ich spots on ANY of the fish, Not to say ich wasn;t there...I'm sure its waiting to spring up the second the fish gets stressed from the move home.


First big No No, They have an absurd number of 12+ inch long Pacu's shoved into a tank that I guess is around 35 gallons, its a little shorter than my 30gal, but its also a little longer. But the tank has about 10 inches of substrate in it, which leaves things cramped.

Not only are their so many large Pacu that they can barely turn around, but theres also a foot and a half long pl*co in there. Utterly Horrible.

I decide I've had enough and go to check out, only to see a woman has returned a badly injured eel,it looked like it was attacked by something. So she returned it and is getting another one, I talk with the manager and he says hes going to put it into an unoccupied display tank and give it some Aquasol, Because he had no freshwater hospital tanks [ even tho he had buuko loads of empty 10gals that he could have easily filled up to set up as a hospital tank. ]

YOu could tell just by the way manager was talking that he wasn't going to try to save the eel, afterall..why should he invest money into it when theres a risk he could loose money?


To top of my rage.. I run to PetSmart next [ still ranting about PetLand, just keep reading ], Walk in there.. and I swear, its like the different between heaven [ petsmart ] and hell [ petland ].

PetLand has this club membership that you can buy and get discounts, well on the Shrimp Pellets at PetLand with the Member Discount is over 10 bucks, at PetSmart their only 8 bucks! Not only that, but their tanks are cheaper, Everything is cheaper! and better to boot!


PetLand is overpriced, and try to get even more money out of you by trying to trick you into signing up for their PetClub even tho you can get stuff cheaper than MEMBER DISCOUNT at PetSmart.

I also have yet to see a sick fish [I.E. Ich, Ect ect ] at PetSmart.



In other words.

PetSmart = Good
PetLand = Bad horrible evil evil dark bad BAD

[peterp]

If you can find a Big AL's in your area give them look.
Then you will be complaining about the high prices at PetSmart .

Or browse their online equipment prices at Big Al's Online

[William]

Just look at it this way.

Some items at PetLand cost 8 bucks.

the same item at PetSmart costs 2

[peterp]

Completely agreeing with you.

I have sort of the same set of stores here, a PetCo, PetSmart and BigAl's a few blocks apart. I make the rounds of all 3 just to see what they have and to compare prices. I usually end up buying from Big Al's.

[William]

Despite my previous decree, I had to go back to PetLand today because they are the closest place with brine shrimp [ the other being an hour away. ]


I was thinking I may get another female betta, as well. Thinking that, even tho they have had such a problem with ich, a Betta should be fine since they stay in their own little bowl and have no interaction with any of the other fish/water/ect ect.


Boy was i wrong, I walked over to where they had the betta's and 2 males were dead, as well as 1 female. all were covered in Ich. Not only that bot many other betta's were also carrying cysts.

[An t-iasg]

Yes, that sounds really terrible. We had a Petland, and the Petsmart and Petco must have driven it out of business, because it closed about a month ago. We also have another store called Pet Supplies Plus. That one is pretty good. All these stores are within about 5 minutes of each other. I was never in the Petland when it was here. They had dogs and cats in there, and I'm allergic. So I put one foot in the door and turned right back around again, the stench was so bad. But if you're not allergic it may not have bothered you!