Appalling!

[noelberg]

Today I went to Pugh's Aquaworld (or some such name) in Hagerstown, Maryland. I was excited at first because they had some cool fish like Archers and elephant noses, but things went downhill from there. They didn't have substrate in any of their tanks - I felt really bad for the cichlids and dragon gobies. They had feeder fish in with the Pacu - idiots! They also had this mid-size Pacu in a 20 gal tank that it could barely turn around in. Same with a 7-9 inch (probably bigger; i couldn't measure) Oscar - poor things. And their saltwater tanks looked beyond pitiful: no liverocks and lots of dead fish (very bad when you're dealing with SW). And most lfs' in my area have fish in 20 gal tanks, if not bigger (except bettas), but they had a lot of 10 gal tanks that were stocked like 20's ... and most lfs' overstock their 20's as it is.

In short, this "reputable" lfs had worse conditions than my local WalMart. I can still see that poor Oscar trying to turn around ...

 

[noelberg]

Oh yeah, and they had 3 tanks of painted glass fish. The ones with the faded looking dye job (they've been there a while) were labeled "fruit tetras".

 

[cutechic]

Did you complain to the manager?

 

[guppymonkey]

I have seen plenty of worthless shops like that in my area, even in the local mall! You can usually tell just by taking a sniff when you walk in. If it smells bad then its generally a sign that the store is bad. When they don't take care of their fish they usually don't take care of their other animals either. Its really sad to see shops like that. My girlfriend almost cried when she saw how bad the pet store in the mall was.

 

[Doggfather]

sounds like a store is cutting the budget

 

[drobbins27]

Fruit Tetras