petco irresponsible

Most retail chains don't see it the way you do. Its crazy , but its true. I worked retail for 5 years and fought tooth and nail to get things right for our freshwater tanks and never got any were. To them they are just fish and nothing more.
Kp
Sent via App 2

 

I try to save as many fish as i can from them lol. Saved a real nice midas blenny the other day.

 

Sorry to say this, but you really don't save fish when buying them. It just promotes a sale and they order more livestock because they actually made money instead of a loss. Just don't support them at all, it will do more good.

 

There are Petco's that actually have really nice systems and good fish. Most though do not. The chain as a whole those has recognized this as a problem in their stores and are working on this. Here in Des Moines Metro we have 4 Petco's and on of them I complained abut to corporate until there were no longer saltwater fish in the store. There isn't and hasn't been now for almost 3 years.

 

It was a good 15 years ago, but I remember telling the store manager in Cedar Rapids one of their little lizards had a littler one by the head trying to eat. He shrugged and told me "that's nature taking it's course." I guess we don't have a lot of lizards around here, but I've never seen 10+ lizards enclosed in the space of a ten gallon aquarium with no food in nature.

He's still the store manager all these years later.

I can't imagine someone with so little regard for life would care any more about fish.

 

Last I was out the Jordan creek petco has saltwater. Stuff didn't look great, but I have seen worse from the fish stores here. The one guy working wouldn't sell my GF more than 2 glowfish because her tank cycle had just ended using dead shrimp and he wanted her to wait a week to add more. I was impressed.

 

I would say the Petco in Jordan Creek is the nicest I've ever seen. Of course thats mostly comparing it to the one in Sioux City and anything looks good compared with that one. If it wasn't the only store somewhat resembling a saltwater fish store within 2 hours of me I wouldn't go there.

 

They don't care if the fish die because they make so much margin selling all the stuff to go with the fish that they make it back and more. The Waterloo WM was going to "zero out" all the freshwater fish during their remodel, (translate: throw out) because they simply didn't want to deal with them. I was able to buy them for a ridiculously reduced price and give them to someone who had a 55g and no fish. Ultimately, your best bet is to vote with your dollars.

 

The CR one always has tanks under observation or fish have obvious ich or parasites or something. We've complained numerous times to the customer service line & all they do is credit me reward dollars. The Iowa city one isn't too bad. Much cleaner than CRs at least.

 

The CR one has a list of fish that they will order in for people. Has anyone actually done this? I am wondering if they just drop them in with their already sick fish, or if they are willing to hold them for like 30 minutes or an hour for a person to pick the fish up.

 

They will order for you and you can request them not to put it in the tank but you need to be there when they come in. Also I know they can order from ORA but they have to have a min order of $350 to order from ORA so get a few buddies together to get a order in.
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They will order them in for you, and they won't put them in the tanks if you request it.

 

Yep, a year or so ago I ordered in 5 sexy shrimp from them. They called me when they arrived and I told them I'd be there in a couple hours, so they kept them in the bag for me. I prefer the Iowa City one, but I think the new guy thought what I was asking for was some weird joke because he just said "No we don't order those." So I called Cedar Rapids, where the response was "Yes, we can get them. You have THAT many anemones?? Each shrimp requires one." After I told her they host frogspawn and other corals like clownfish and prefer to be in groups, she went ahead and ordered them anyway. So yep, they'll do special orders, but sometimes it's an adventure. Shrimp are still doing well.

 

There are a ton of good stores in Iowa, why even bother supporting them & their practices? I know there are stores in DM, CR/IC, & the QC

 

Of course I can only speak for myself, but I definitely prefer to support local stores over chains. In the circumstance mentioned above, I had actually purchased my first two shrimp from your store (only ones in stock) and was ordering a larger group to add to them. It's not always an option to make an hour drive each way for something either, and store hours sometimes make it difficult. We are fortunate to have many stores within a reasonable distance in our region though - and I try to support them all. Moreso the ones I feel I am treated better at. I was actually in AC&C over the weekend, and hope to make it there more often now that you're expanding hours.

 

I prefer local fish stores too, in general. That being said I have been to many fish only stores that were worse than the WDM petco. By the logic of voting with your money wouldn't it make sense to buy from a decent managed petco as that would encourage other stores to provide better care to their animals? That being said places like seascapes have really stepped their game up in the past few years and are pretty nice now. For livestock, at least in DM, it's hard to beat online though. With no local DM place offering any guarantee on saltwater livestock or even taking back livestock or giving partial credit if you need to return a fish I really can’t afford it and see no benefit whatsoever to locally buying fish or coral although I still do it from time to time. I like to spend local, but I am not rich either so I buy supplies local and livestock online. It's a balance I am ok with.

Walmart years ago (15 or 20 years ago) could order some pretty nice harder to come by freshwater fish. For small town Iowa it was the only place I could find those specimens. Been a loooong time since then though.

 

PM sent with my honest response. No need to get into it here publically.

 

I travel the country, covering 22 states in the last 6 years. Often people judge chain stores by their local store. I have seen many outstanding Petco stores and some real bad stores, same for lfs, some have bad livestock, others have prices jacked so high that I would never consider buying from them. Take the current area I am working in, the Petco is handled by a local club member, but there is ich in the tanks. Even the best shops have apistasia. My lfs has more deadloss than sales, and a bubble algae outbreak so bad I wouldn't put anything from their tanks into my own.