i've seen a lot of posts about "no refunds on saltwater fish" and "Petco doesn't quarantine!"
can anyone imagine what would be going on if Petco DID have a return policy on saltwater? people buy fish from them all the time without giving them any proper care whatsoever. they would be getting returns and giving out cash left and right all day long to people who'd buy the same wrong fish again and again killing more and more. it's actually not completely about Petco's greed, as Petco loses money on their saltwater. they do this to attract customers who will spend on the dry goods. just last night a couple bought a Clown Surgeonfish (grows 15 inches quickly, 180 gallon tank minimum recommendation) and finally admitted, as i was checking them out at the register, that it was going in a 20 gallon tank (surely with sorry filtration). i tried to sway them, and they just said they were going to "try him out". we can't blame big corporations for greed causing mis-care of fish when it's also we the customers doing the same redicoulous things.
there is no reason to quarantine the fish that come in each week either. they all come from the same place, and they wouldn't go in pristine tanks after the quarantine. they would also be going to just another not-perfect tank than they already have, probably making things worse by stress, etc. there would also have to be twice the amount of saltwater tanks at Petco. the best thing you could do with double the amount of tanks at each Petco would be to just use them as more tanks to sell the same amount of fish, doubling each fish's space!
i work at Petco and honestly spend way more time in aquatics than my managers care to let me. just the other day i finally got permission to vaccume every tank, take out most of the gravel (way, way too deep), stabilize the salinity, etc. it really is a chore to keep those tanks right, and the store's tanks are sometimes going to be in a lot better condition than other times. we have 18 tanks split 12 on one sump, 6 on the other. we occasionally get a few corals in with the usually weekly fish shipment. those are put in the smaller system of 6 tanks, and mostly do fine. they sell quickly, sometimes a a couple hanging around for over a week. people have mentioned that we don't quarantine before we sell. there's no need for all this specialized treatment when shift-changes happen all day long and workers like me have long periods away from it all. if you know how working is, everyone just wouldn't keep track with who's doing what and why.
there are some other pet stores in town, and honestly i'd rather get my fish here then at either of the others, and one of those stores specializes in only saltwater! why? specimens are guaranteed to only from the breeder (you know the history, the relative age, etc). this is not the case at ANY other store in town, where the same fin-nipped, ick-ridden specimens can be found. but not only that! they have old fish, fish coming from some previous customer's agressive tank (which once half-killed the fish you just bought), and absolutely any random place imaginable including the local docks (as i know for a fact many do, and same goes for any of you anywhere near ocean). also i buy specimens from Petco because they are indeed inexpensive or atleast reasonably priced (and that's even before my employee discount). honestly, i hope we all don't pay too cheap for fish in the years to come. this will just lead to more wreckless carelessness of our "mini-ecosystems" to where they're inexpensive enough that some will just let crash and start over!
there are many remarks and questions i could speak on, agreeing with many of them. it is definitely NOT true that "At Petco, our pets ALWAYS come first!". Petco is a huge corporation just like most of the places we go to for deals like Wal-Mart, so why is it such a shock? and each store's aquatics department is goign to vary in quality by the people running them. they hire the same teenagers many of you have. we don't know everything, and MOST of them don't know as much as i do, if anything at all. like with any job, everyone's trying to please those people above them, some more than others. i do take flak for spending "too much" time and may or may not be seen as a better worker for doing it.
(to clear my name
):as an employee, it IS animals first. i'm honest with every customer, as informative as i can be, and when they don't know things, or i dont know an answer, i urge them to research and find out before they make a move.
i think about what we're discussing a lot while at work. if there was going to be a change, it'd only maybe happen if there was a very large country wide protest showing exactly how Petco's slogan is a lie. every person on Reef Central could boycott Petco and they wouldn't even notice. i hope something will change someday... it could happen right?...
this is a late night, and i probably littered this with errors and typo's, sorry in advance! i'll be tagging along though,
zack
