Horrified at Petco today

[Lucky Lefty]

Stopped at Petco in Lawrence township NJ, mercer mall plaza. They had a very big fish display front and center of the store so I thought I was going to see some nice tanks considering it was such a large part of the store.

I was wrong. Very wrong. In one of the first tanks I found what you see in the attached photo. A rotting corpse of a yellow tang atop a piece of coral. Bubble algae everywhere, another dead fish in a different tank. Every anemone was white, and their bodies looked deflated and melted. I think every single snail was dead, there were what had to be hundred of dead snails and shells. I saw maybe 3 or 4 living hermits, out of hundreds of shells.

The Ich was insane. Close to every fish had several white spots/lumps, and we are talking maybe 50 fish give or take, possibly much more. Pink tail trigger with its tail speckled with white lumps.

2 or 3 of the many clownfish had large spots on either side of the head where their scales were gone and the flesh was turning a purple and green color. One juvenile clown was the worst of them all, aside from the pictured zombie tang. Covered in white spots, had some sort of slime ripping of its body, and all of the fins were ripped and falling apart, he was in the same tank as a baby sailfin tang that was also covered in white spots.

I'm not trying to bash Petco here, but what I saw today made me angry and just left with a terrible feeling. If those were cats or puppies, people would be boycotting Petco. Something needs to change at this particular store.

[Remmers]

Makes you want to go up to the manager explain that they have no clue what there doing, off to buy whats still has a chance for $1 each and bring home and try to rehab them.

I agree with the OP, if it was cats or dogs it would be on the national news

[mandarin_goby]

You're not the only one to have seen stuff like this at PetCo; there's a thread about them under the "Responsible Reefkeeping" subforum: http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...1#post23068541

It's downright shameful :/

[reepher315]

Yea Ive seen quite the number of dead fish at petco. Also have witnessed a mother and daughter leaving petco with a yellow tang and a 20g tank. Sure its better than being dead at the store. But is it?

[Pigpen17]

The Petco in my neighborhood is the same. Horrible. I don't go in there anymore and get my supplies from Petsmart or online.

[Nightshiner]

The petco by me was trying to sell aiptasia anemones as fanatics. I told the owner of a local store o were and she bought them all because they breed berghia nudibranchs.

[dmh41532]

every now and then we walk into our local petco for frozen food, the only thing I will buy there. it's terrible what we see, not just the fish but the reptiles and amphibians as well. one worker told a customer that Picasso triggers are peaceful, reef safe fish. not to mention all the dead, rotting fish and algae.

[foundnemo11]

Yea petco is horrible. All fish there have diseases because they don't know what they are doing and just throw them in diseased tanks. The workers get ally have no idea what they are talking about either. I can't say all employees or petco a are bad but every singe one I've seen is the same. I wouldn't buy anything from there. Go to a lbs or order from an online store that has a good rep

[foundnemo11]

Originally Posted by dmh41532

every now and then we walk into our local petco for frozen food, the only thing I will buy there. it's terrible what we see, not just the fish but the reptiles and amphibians as well. one worker told a customer that Picasso triggers are peaceful, reef safe fish. not to mention all the dead, rotting fish and algae.

I wouldn't even buy food there. It's basically donating to the problem

[dmh41532]

yeah it really is, we don't have a local fish store that sells it since they've gone out of business. I've considered ordering it in bulk online.