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In my area in Florida they have really gotten better with stuff like that they give the right information no abused fish
I live in San Antonio, Texas. I do not by any chance go to PetSmart, I only go for Papa Jim's Tropical Fish and Fintique Tropical Fish Pet Store where they actually care for their animals and keep an eye on maintenance.
Papa Jim's is where I got my Halmahera Gecko and Fintique is where I got my Reedfish (also known as Rope Fish) from. For anyone who wants pets I suggest going to these two stores.
Papa Jim's has birds, mammals, amphibians, invertebrates, reptiles and fish (even live plants) while Fintique has freshwater and saltwater animals. They both also have a lot of supplies.
I feel like getting a job at Papa Jim's, but I'm not sure since I'll have to take the bus lol.
Comment made: 4:40 AM Tuesday, February 28 2023
* me on my way to buy the entire beta stock to feed to my axolotl after pretending to rescue them *
I've seen on reddit (the betta sub) that some people will ask for a discount for a sick fish- which I feel is maybe the right way to go about it, because the store sees smaller profits if they do sell those fish at a discount, and a sick fish still gets a chance to live.
I've ALSO seen a lot of arguments for just shoplifting bettas from the pet store, which legally you shouldn't do, but………
When I got my first fish from Petland at age 12, I was told that betta fish can live in small plastic tanks and don’t need a filter. I still feel guilty for the misery I caused that poor fish. One day I’ll adopt one “second hand” and give it a massive tank, to make up for what I did in a way
I recently got a job at one of those chain pet stores, we do our best to clean their water every other day, we feed them well and they are usually sold within days, they are never in those cups for long. Please realize we cant house them in any other way because as much as id love to put them in their own tanks its just not possible. I got the job so i could do my best to take care of them, and i refuse sales of fish if their tanks are too small or not cycled. I do my best to give them all the proper info.
i love the "i"m not telling you to steal ……bUT." lmaooo but i totally agree, like, you shouldn't encourage those shops to sell more fish if they can't give them proper tank and medical care, so iF you find another way to rescue these fish then..👀👀
I got my Betta from my local garden center actually! I live in Germany and my local Hornbach has all of their Bettas living with a couple of snails and shrimp in 60 liter(15 gallons?) aquariums with live plants!
I wish the fish store that I used to buy from was still in business. Their fish were more expensive than at chain pet stores but so worth it.
When they got a shipment of fish they would quarantine and medicate them for a week before selling them. They also had their bettas in proper environments and the employees were well trained.
As a result, I never once had one of their fish die after I purchased them. But when I bought pet store fish I allowed for a 20% death rate. Too bad that fish store is no longer in business. I miss their quality fish and caring attitude. And since I only recently found out about buying fish online I thought pet stores had become my only option
I work at Petco now and we are allowed to deny sales and stuff like that I do really feel bad for the betta fish they are kept in these small containers and one was even dying and a girl asked if she could have him at least with a discount and were technically not even allowed to do that. It’s really sad, but I try to make sure people are getting the right size tanks for them and not just putting them in a small vase or bowl
I had to move to germany and NO one wanted my beta, he was so beautiful and black and i tried pet stores and fb and no one wanted him… i was so mad
I used to work at Petco. I worked there for about 6-7 months. I own many of my own pets, some of mine being fish. I always brought up tank cycling to people buying fish and also asked them what size of tank they had. I’d try to be as polite and kind to customers as I could when I brought up the topic of how to take care of the pet they’re buying but many customers would get mad at me and some of my coworkers who did the same thing for “telling them what to do with their pets.” Most people seemed to either know the facts already but would choose a fish bowl anyways because it’s cheap or just not see fish as valuable life so they’d choose the cheap option for that reason. Many parents would bring their toddlers in to pick out a fish, usually a betta or goldfish, and put it in either a bowl or one gallon and it would be returned back to Petco later that week if not the next day. Parents didn’t want to spend a ton of money on their kid’s pet so they’d also choose the cheap option. I witnessed so much animal death working at Petco. My coworker started keeping track of the fish deaths and he got in trouble for bringing it up to management. The most traumatizing things I witnessed at Petco were when one of my managers decided to house two hamsters together and one of the hamsters chewed the other hamsters eyes out during the night when no one was at the store. We found them the next morning. Also I found a budgie that passed away in the sale cage and I pointed it out to one of my managers and she just tossed the bird into the “death freezer” like she had no respect for the bird. (My own bird had just passed away from an untreatable medical condition a few days before this happened so seeing her do that to the bird really messed me up.) My friend ,who was the one manager who actually cared for the animals at Petco, got fired for feeding the hamsters mealworms (which is healthy for them! There are literally mealworms in the hamster food Petco sells!) I left shortly before he was fired because I couldn’t deal with seeing death everyday and my mental health was struggling. I still have nightmares quite often from working at Petco.
My local pet store SUCKS. I have bought from them before but their fish always die within a week. I had a small group of guppies I had got from Petco in my 29 gallon tank, and wanted to add a acouple more but petco was upgrading their tanks so I went to the local store, the three guppies I bought died very quickly. I have also seen them sell someone a bowl and betta, but they won't sell goldfish to anyone with a tank less than 20 gallons, so I guess there's that.
My local petco goes above and beyond with their animal care. I rarely see dead fish, while their bettas are in cups they seem relatively healthy and the cups are clean. They wouldn't sell someone a goldfish because they wanted to stick in it a 10 gallon tank, said that goldfish should have at least 40 gallons. They recommend 3 gallon tanks (with heater and fliter) and larger for bettas, which 5 is the minimum, but it's better than a bowl.
THANK YOU. i told this one group that you aren't "rescuing" Bettas when you buy them from big pet chains. it creates a faux demand and only puts more in the shelves. i got FLAMED for this.. guess i hurt their savior complex lmfao
Them selling sick fish may as well be their business model. The same thing with buying any animal from an unethical source with the excuse that you're rescuing it.
A beta fish is 50$ in new zealand?! Makes sense I guess with proper care and shipping there. But dang.
I live in Napier, NZ, and they have very very good pet stores. Pet stores never have fishbowls when I go there tbh, also love ur videos! 💗
My Betta recently passed away from cancer, I loved her dearly.
Thank you for spreading the good word
I am from the UK. When the big pet chain stores started opening they put all the small local pet shops out of business, as they charged cheaper prices. In the 'old days' the small pet shops were amazing, selling a huge variety of animals and specialist pet products. Now the big stores have stopped selling birds, reptiles, etc, and also have a very limited range of things for these kinds of pets. If you want a pet budgies now I have no idea how to get one, as the small shops are all closed down! It's so annoying.
The owners of the small pet shops used to get a lot of their fish from local fish hobbyists and breeders, and they were all adapted to the local water conditions and bred to be healthy and big.
The big stores order in factory farmed inbred and poor quality cheap fish from Asia. Many are raised in tanks loaded with chemicals, hormones and antibiotics to keep them alive as the conditions are so bad on these farms. When they are put into a normal aquarium or pond they have no resistance to diseases or germs because of this and they die. They are also weakened from the stress of transportation from Asia to Europe. Many of the fish are also wild caught, put through the stress of capture, transportation, and difficulties of adapting to captivity.
I think the big stores know what they are doing, because the more customers fish die the more fish they will sell as customers must come back to buy more fish. They can also see medications for sick fish etc. It's immoral.
People would save the lives and 'rescue' many more fish IF they stopped buying them from these chain pet stores. When you buy a sick fish the store will just keep ordering more to replace it, and keep them in the same bad conditions. If people stopped buying them then the store will not get any more!
It's similar issues for the tarantula community. The animals are horribly kept and people think they are rescuing the animals but really it's just encouraging them to sell more.
its been a while since ive been in a pet shop, especially chain stores in the UK, but i don't remember many carrying bettas at all! i know a few larger ones will have bettas mixed in ome each with other single fish sale tanks but never like … RACKS of them lol
its really crazy how much this changes from country to country
About two or three months ago I went to one of our Pet stores, actually the only pet store nearby (still an hour drive) I saw that one tiny, yellow budgie. He had some growth defects with his feathers and was therefore not able to fly. At first the employee wasn't sure if he could be sold so she asked the manager since he was a special needs and normally they don't sell animals with defects, also because most people just want healthy, pretty ones. But in the end I was able to buy him for half the original price and my other budgie, who is a show budgie and therefore a bad flyer too, has a new partner.
There’s a smaller privately owned pet store near where I live that does a way better job at caring for their fish than PetSmart. They always ask how big the tank is and if it’s fully cycled before they sell us any fish. There also used to be a few other privately owned aquarium stores in my city before they closed down. These guys were genuinely compassionate about fish but one of the owners retired and didn’t sell the store.
Not all employees at chain pet stores are uneducated. Often times in these chain pet stores there are policies, rules and guidelines that the employees have to follow, whether they agree with them or not.
I've had many people say "If you love animals, don't work at a pet store"
I live in Canada, and my local petsmart and Pet valu are actually pretty darn good!
their staff is educated. Last year when I first got my guinea pigs, I had a staff member REFUSE to sell me a cage because the ones I wanted were TOO SMALL.
I'm glad now that they turned me away, because after spending tons of money on getting larger and larger and larger cage, i finally settled in with a C&C cage which if I had just listened in the first place I would have saved TONS of money.
I got a betta fish yesterday. They have a 10 gallon tank with a heater and a low flow filter. I've been buying from this store for a while as they are the only place around that sells frozen bloodworms and brine shrimp, which I need for my axolotls.
They seemed upset to put them in cups as when they didn't have a lot of fish in the big tanks, the bettas would get to swim around in the bigger tanks with lots of plants. The bettas looked healthy, at least. I haven't even named the shimmery blue veil tail betta, yet they seem to be thriving. He ate some blood worms today, and he explored the hides, and he swims to the front of the tank when I pass.
I don’t remember the name of the store or how common it is, I think it’s a chain one but I’m australian so still.
But in that store I saw something worse than the beta cups. A small box about the size of a cup with a giant fake plant in the middle with barely any room for the beta and it was horrible to see. I wanted to steal the fish so bad, next time I went there there were no fish in it so I’m guessing they’re all dead
When I was a kid, I used to have a beta fish of all places you could get a beta fish from I got him from Walmart. Walmart is not a pet store looking back on it the fact that there are Walmarts that just sell fish is really weird like I know Walmart sells basically everything but why sell fish when you’re not a pet store
I know the "what if we start stealing fish" is a joke, but I couldn't help but imagine news reports about fish from chain pet stores disappearing, and that amused me.
I honestly feel like America is going so backwards I don’t have hope for anything any more.
from my experience here in finland our petstores are pretty good on the animal care – granted i have only been to one bigger chain store and a couple of smaller local stores. they do sometimes have questionable things for sale (fish bowls, horrible plastic hamster enclosures etc). the big problem here is that the workers usually have no clue how to take care of the animal. like i've heard them say "oh, you need to feed a snake every day/week" or "yeah hamsters can cohab". they usually also do not ask if you have a tank/enclosure ready (unless you're checking the horrible enclosures out, then they're very happy to sell them to you!) – we bought some fish when my parents still had a tank and they just sold them to us no questions asked.
also those betta cups are horrible 🙁 here they at least have decent size tanks for the fish. i hate how people see fish as disposable, sure they are cheaper than most but they're still living beings and deserve a good life!
I miss my Betta he was killed by a faulty filter
ah soda, crime encourager
god, i remember walmart used to sell bettas in those shitty cups. it was so damn sad to see.
A local pet store in AB they dont keep bettas in the evil cups as far as I saw they kinda like had huge tanks split up for each one 5G? (didnt checksize just guessing) was getting stuff for my mice. ( besti can explain LOL)
COME ON EVERYONE LETS STEAL THOSE FISH (and other small pets at chain petstores) THEY CANT CATCH US ALL
I think, not sure, but it's an idea at least: instead of taking the fish home if they are in bad condition, call the upper management or district/regional manager of the chain store, the more people to make complaints might make them at least re-evaluate their methods or routines in that store. More than anything though, money talks, and boycotting or not buying fish at these stores will speak VOLUMES to the company.