Aaah! Petco's aquatics is horrible!

[Paden]

I went into the petco last Wed in BrooklynPark.I really think it was the dirtiest tanks of death i ever seen!.I asked the kid who finaly came from the back just why the tanks looked so bad,andhe replied that he just hasn,t had time to clean the glass.Told him the substrate,plants and decorations could not of been cleaned in the last week to look like that.I spoke to the manager who was like don't ya know we clean the tanks on Tue.Yeah you could tell she was a burnout.This is the same store that had their saltwater fish taken away by corp cause they could NOT keep clowns,angels etc alive.
Paden

 

[acidblondie]

I've seen even worse things at some of the LFS's around here and some less than acceptable things at some of the premium shops. Just gotta watch what you're doing where ever you go. That said I got a 4 1/2 inch purple tang at petco for $120, looked fine when I got him and he's doing just fine now 8 months later

 

[thestreetzking]

I noticed petco now only sells through live aquaria online now, whats the chance thats where there getting there fish for the stores now? might be better but still if the employees suck i dont think it will matter

 

[Zerodeception0]

It varies from location to location is what I have seen. I go to one that is amazingly clean always. I managed to pick up a black clown (I think) hosting a condy. After about one month, still doing great. She is in my avatar. I have seen some places horrible in tank maintenance from saltwater to freshwater. Those animals don't deserve that but better.

 

[thestreetzking]

whats funny is my petcos selection of freshwater is amazing and everything is great, I have picked up many cichlids with wonderful results.

 

[CStrickland]

It's like they are factory-farming the stock. Except unlike with food animals none of us have the excuse that we can't afford to buy properly handled animals cause unlike eating, hobbies are optional. But it's harder to support ethical practices with shady sellers driving prices down.

I'm losing hope that the liveaquaria partnership is going to do any good

 

[Shawn O]

We have three real good Petco's all run by reefers from local clubs, the one close to me not, I was there on shipment day and they had three fish I wanted still in the bag I wanted to buy the three but they would not sell me the fish unless the were first put into their tanks then netted and put in a new bag, I said I would save them the trouble, give me the bag with the fish in it and they said that they were not allowed to.

Have them put the entire bag into the tank and then remove the bag with a net. Maybe their policy is to get them out of the shipping water into clean(er) water asap?

I noticed petco now only sells through live aquaria online now, whats the chance thats where there getting there fish for the stores now? might be better but still if the employees suck i dont think it will matter

Petco now owns LiveAquaria.

My local Petco, which just opened this spring, has a decent SW section. Nothing dead, no obvious illnesses, etc. The Coral/Anemone MARS unit went through a bad Cyano outbreak but has been good since. Their corals and nems don't look too good but the fish are all healthy looking, except for a pair of Zebra Barred dartfish, who look underfed. The fish may just look be healthy looking due to replacing them with new fish as soon as they get sickly looking, who knows?. A few of the employees there seem genuinely interested in the well being of the fish, at least for now...

 

[Genera]

At this point if you're just now discovering petco is less than desirable with their fish keeping policy and execution, you're clearly new to the hobby. That's like starting a thread complaining about the fish keeping practices and staff knowledge at Walmart. Enter the store with appropriate expectations

No I discovered this years ago. This is the first time I've been to a Petco in a few years other than $/gal sales, and I checked on their fish to see if the fish were in good health or not, in this case, the with were not healthy. Some of the Petcos I've been to, one of them in particular, is actually quite good at maintaining their aquatics. The problem is they already have disease and pests inside of it. So if they treated it and kept it that way, then that store could probably rival an LFS. The problem is the good employees don't work every day.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

We have three real good Petco's all run by reefers from local clubs, the one close to me not, I was there on shipment day and they had three fish I wanted still in the bag I wanted to buy the three but they would not sell me the fish unless the were first put into their tanks then netted and put in a new bag, I said I would save them the trouble, give me the bag with the fish in it and they said that they were not allowed to.

This past Tuesday I tried the same thing with a Royal Gramma, they just got two of them in and I wanted one of them. BUT only if I could have it in the shipping bag as it was. Nope they couldn't do that. :hammer:

 

[SaltyDoug]

I just went to a BRAND NEW petco in shrewsbury ma. I found 4 dead damsels and a foxface who looked like his face was covered in a spider Web I had no idea what it was. I told the employee about all the dead fish but he didn't seem that concerned. All the tangs clearly had ich as well :/

 

[andrek787]

This is sad. I stopped by an LFS today to get some supplies and saw a guy from PETCO fish department buying fish there for his own tank.

 

[Genera]

This is sad. I stopped by an LFS today to get some supplies and saw a guy from PETCO fish department buying fish there for his own tank.

Smart guy though

 

[BuzzPion]

I've half thought about getting a jug of clove oil to take with me to the local Petco. The last time I was in there, they had a dead dog face stuck onto a power head. Only it wasn't quite dead as it opened my eyes and looked right at me. I've never seen a fish that looked so bad and was still alive. Heartbreaking.

 

[Isaacs55]

This is so terrible! I actually went to my local Petco and the same thing happened there as well! They had a tiger watchman goby with its body rotting or something...it was in a tank with like 5 emerald crabs!!! Who does that? Anyway I felt so bad that I baught the tiger watchman goby and put him in my tank hopefully he will recover ....idk what he has or if the emerald crabs scratched him up but I had to take him from there. I hope whatever it is won't hurt or make my clownfish sick.
Here's a few pictures. ..
It looks like it's gotten better since I got him. He didn't have signs of ich or anything. There's something white specs on him but it's from my fine sand. Cuz it blows off when he moves.

Hope you guys can help.
Petco has really gone down the drain recently. ..this is sad

 

[Shawn O]

I just went to a BRAND NEW petco in shrewsbury ma. I found 4 dead damsels and a foxface who looked like his face was covered in a spider Web I had no idea what it was. I told the employee about all the dead fish but he didn't seem that concerned. All the tangs clearly had ich as well :/

And it's a brand new store? Wow.

 

[Dmorty217]

Here are countless other threads on this same subject on here. Moral of the story is NOT to buy from the store front. If you get fish off he net Petco will more than likely have their hand in it, or someone who they get their fish from will. Tropical fish international is who they get their online orders dropped shipped from, also know as CIS holdings.

 

[SaltyDoug]

And it's a brand new store? Wow.

Hasn't even been open 3 weeks.
First week I stopped in and saw what clearly was ich on multiple tangs. I dropped petco a Facebook message and they got back to me and said "we will look into it thank you"
So when I was in the area the other day I popped in and it was way worse then the first time.

Oddly enough they had a very nice fresh water section. Including a pretty cool looking waterfall cascading aquatic plant holding tank.

Maybe I'll snag some pics next time if it's still bad, I'm usually pretty shy about doing that though.

 

[Saltz Creep]

 

[Isaacs55]

Seems legit...

 

[Genera]

I just visited the Petco with the actual experienced staff, and I have to say, they've improved. There was no aiptasia and no ich/disease that I could find, but I did hear that someone was buying chromis, and he was asking for 'the ones without the face scars, or missing fins'. That is because they kept multiple chromis in a relatively small tank with new and existing fish, so the hierarchy is all messed up. They also kept multple Banggai Cardinalfish in the the same tank. The 180, frag tank, and display tank, were all good though. I didn't look at the main fish system though. Still, my local fish stores are better.