Horrible pet store conditions?

Question

If it is so bad to have very agressive fish in a small tank why do pet stores do it. If you go to petco you see 15 african cichlids in probably a 5-10 gallon tank. How do pet stores like petco prevent deaths in these situations. I never see dead fish at petco. Not that this question is important, I was just wondering. I had 10 africans in a 100 gallon and 2 died because of a territorial yellow lab. I have no idea how pet stores do it.

Answer 1

Even good fish stores manage to keep overstocked aquariums by having extreme levels of filtration, doing constant water changes, and most importantly, acknowledging that it's only a temporary situation.

Aggressive fish generally need to have time to establish territory before they start defending it. In a hugely overstocked tank fresh from being shipped, they're also so stressed out they won't exhibit normal behavior, including aggression.

And also, yes, when fish die, employees are supposed to be right there to scoop them out -- to keep the corpse from polluting the water, to keep other fish from nibbling at possibly diseased tissue, and to keep things looking good for customers.

Answer 2

Any decent pet store will have sump/vat filtration systems in other words what you see in the tank is maybe 10pct of the water volume, and behind the scenes you will find large vats of water that are filtered in and out of the tank thus giving a greater capacity to hold fish. think about it. if everyone bought a guppy from the tank with 50 in, they take out a bag of water in goes the fish 50 times there's be no water left would there.
That is why its important to check all the tanks for diseased fish because they re on one system.

AJ

Answer 3

usually pet stores sell out quickly on fish like this so the fish dont even have the chance to become territorial. full grown a cichlid tank usually will maintain only 1 fish per 15 gallons... but usually petstores get the fish in so young...they are rasied together and have tolerance too. im a manager of a private petstore...we keep 10 cichlids in a 20 gallon tank... but they come in babies and are raised together and we see them leave before they become aggressive. every fish owner will experience fish loss... but youre cichlids are proably alot older and have become territiorial

Answer 4

since youve brought up the subject of petco pet stores ,one time i purchased a beta and two days later it died on me.it had ick and boy,did it look gross,it looked as if there were grapes growing on that poor fish!then over the past two years ive gotten 5 guinea pigs at a petco store and ive had to return them because they had all sorts of ailments.recently i got two parakeets at a petsmart store it was spotless and thinks were in order.i will never go back to a petco store again!

Answer 5

They keep replacing the dead ones for display purposes. Petco probably has alot in back seperated so it's easy to replace. That way they fool the customer and then one of them are killed by the other fish, you get another one and the cycle continues

Answer 6

The fish do die, they just don't care. They buy them in bulk and don't care if they lose them. They constantly keep the tanks cleaned for business reasons. Try finding a smaller, not big branch pet store, they tend to care for fish better.

Answer 7

They don't prevent deaths they just take the dead fish out. They are notorious for having horrible pet conditions.

Answer 8

Maybe they are diligent about taking dead fish out of the tanks.

Answer 9

they dont. I think they probably just get rid of the dead before you see. Petco is hell for fish. And crickets.

Answer 10

They are always cleaning out the dead fish. That is a big part of their job.