Andy Sager
Aquarium Advice Addict
How would they qt every fish they got? I walked in the same way one time. I thought the same thing, but who has the time and space to qt hundreds of fish? They stay in the shop for little over a week anyway so its not there problem.
While I can't speak for all stores, I do know that when they are going to a wholesale house to pick the fish out for the store, they are buying from tanks that have been medicated when the fish first arrived so there is some protection against disease. Also, when looking at the fish, if the tank is full of sick fish, the wholesaler ( well good ones at least) will not sell the fish from that tank. But in a wholesale house, it's not uncommon to have multiple tanks of the same fish so there are choices unlike in a pet store that only has 1 tank of a certain fish. Then, when the fish get to the store ( here's a secret) stores will use clear medications to continue to prevent disease outbreaks. So the need for a store to QT the freshwater fish from the wholesaler is not as bad. Saltwater, on the other hand, is a different story. These fish, at the wholesale houses I worked at or owned, were QTd and medicated before they were put up for sale. Stores that bought fish from the QT section, would continue the QT at their stores.
But the reason you want to QT fish when you get them from a Pet Store is because now the fish have been exposed to who knows what that was in the store's system and other fish. That's the downsides to the centralized systems in stores. It no longer matters if the fish is WC or Tank bred, once in a centralized system, they have been exposed to whatever is in there. THAT'S why we all should be quarantining new fish from the stores.
Hope this helps