I hate to say it but WE are the reason stuff like this happens. Whether it be a high fish demand area, people getting out of the hobby because they thought it was easy and dumping their fish to pet stores, or people trading in fish because they get too large, they are in there due to us. These people are running a business where they need to meet demand by supplying. The same reason there are so many puppy mills, abondoned or stray dogs, or thousands of dogs being put down daily. We as humans jump into hobbies and pet keeping without realizing that in doing so, we are creating reasons for these types of situations to be occuring at an astonishing level. To most stores, these fish are simply dollar signs. And rightfully so, this is how they feed their families, pay employees, pay rent, pay taxes, but more importantly: supply us with the means for our demanding hobby. Sure there could be better ways of doing it, but most would run out of business that way, leaving us empty handed. I'm not saying it is ok for this to happen, it is cruel. But until we ALL can run perfect tanks with ZERO casualties, we will continue to buy these "pets", adding to the high demand, leading to a need for stores to have higher supplies.
