Maidenhead Aquatics - Wyevale Garden Centre

[monkeywobbler]

no possibly not

By the way shelagh, I adore your oscars. There's one in my LFS nearly fully grown (Red Tiger?) that is all by himself and looks so utterly adorable I just want to hug him. And they have 3inch babies too

I need a bigger house

oh tell me about it, there seems to be oscars in every LFS i go in lately,and if i could i would bring them all home,oscars are definatley my kind of fish..well in general they are ,Jambo is out to get me at the moment but they really are the best in the hobby as far as im concerned

They seem to have so much character! Not that other fish don't of course, but it seems so much more pronounced with Oscars - perhaps because they're so much bigger.

 

[spesh]

Character they do have, just brought mine home today and he's busy sulking and hiding from me!

 

[monkeywobbler]

Aww I'm sure he'll perk up and start showing himself soon!

 

[Paul_MTS]

Maybe MA stores use ridiculously big filtration units made by TMC that the public could only start to imagine the size of and amount of dissolved oxygen they pump into the system.

and just maybe a customer had dumped the puffer on them and had no where else to put it!? or still sorting out where to move it to.

Stocking levels in tanks is all down to the shops maintenance regime and the filter system. I doubt the RSPCA will do anything as there's probably nothing wrong.

You didn't mention any dead fish?

 

[andywg]

To echo what Paul says, the filtration on many shops' systems is often hug and hidden from public view. Add to this the very short time that fish are in, if an lfs was to keep to a lower stocking level (say 2" fish per gallon) then a busy store would require deliveries about 3 or 4 times a week.

The linked picture is very light on stocking copmared to some of the shops I have seen.

Large fish are a problem but as Paul says, you don't know the circumstances.

I think it is very bad form to go crying off to the RSPCA when you don't know any of the underlying circumstances. If you can't be bothered to ask and find anythign out about a different way of keeping fish (such as temporarily before sale) then I don't think you are really in any position to criticise it.

 

[Corleone]

I've only seen the filtration system at one of the stores I buy from, but as Paul and Andy posted, each tank shared water with a larger tank in the back room, and there was a line of huge filters that serviced banks of them. What looked like 10 separate 20 gallon tanks can actually be the visible front end of a single 1000 gallon system. The same idea is used in home systems. I've seen marine systems posted online where less than a quarter of the total water volume was in the display tank.

If fish are carrying diseases or dying off in the conditions, that's one thing, but temporary stress is another thing. All the fish I get home show signs of stress to some extent. If, as people said, it was shipment day (which sounds likely - I've seen a store go from heavier than is shown in your picture to virtually deserted in the time it took for me to go home and get my checkbook), the stress is probably as much to do with being bagged and shipped in as it is with their housing.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

I'm very surprised tbh, I visit MA at P'boro relatively regularly (my family live around p'boro and i generally go in for a nosey when I'm visiting) and have always found them to be knowldgeable and helpful and have never spotted a single dead fish or even one showing any signs of disease (if they were diseased and clearly marked up as quarnatined and not for sale then that's fine, not even seen that). They're display tanks are excellent and they have been voted one of the top 10 stores in the country by PFK magazine for several years running.

Not to disupte your experiences, but every establishment has a bad day from time to time and I do think you may well have just caught them on one of them.

For all we know one of their main filters could have packed in earlier that day and they'd been without filtration for an hr or two but got it back on leaving the fish looking stressed but they'd be back to themselves a couple of hours later. There could be all sorts of explanations for a temporary glitch leaving things looking bad.

I'd suggest if you do experience problems with an LFS to talk to the managers about it, if you get no joy then to re-visit on a number of occasions before reporting them. I think it's a little harsh to judge any establishment on the basis of one visit.

 

[liz2]

The Maidenhead Aquatics in Northampton are very very good. I was in one the other day and the staff are always over helpful. There was a tank of betta girls in one shop, in qt. The chap said they were too ill to sell and had come in like that. Indeed they hardly ever have bettas in as they admit they cant get healthy ones. Also they also have large fish brought in by customers as they dont want them and often have to put them anywhere for the time being.
It is a very difficult issue and we all have the welfare of the fish at heart, most shops near me know me anyway so if I moan about the fish they do something about it!

 

[monkeywobbler]

It was not based on the evidence of one visit. I'd been there before and the circumstances were not as bad, although not very good.
I didn't want to stand in the middle of the shop and get into a shouting match with the manager.
It is not "bad form" to go "crying off" to the RSPCA. If in fact they had nothing to worry about, then there is no problem with getting an inspection. As it so happens, they did have something to worry about, as they are going to be reinspected by the RSPCA at a later date to see if they have reformed their ways.
There could be plenty of reasons for the way the fish were treated on that day and as I just said, they have nothing to worry about if those practices are not the norm.

Frankly, I think that the amounts of posts on here condemning a person that cares about the welfare of fish and is willing to do something about it instead of sit back and let it happen, disturbing.
Fine, it might've been your prefernece to stand and talk to the manager, but it wasn't mine, and there was no harm done in calling the RSPCA.
There's really no need to be quite so rude in future as I would treat any one of you with the respect that you deserve.

Monkey

 

[monkeywobbler]

Ok, perhaps I wasn't being "condemned". That's a bit melodramatic. However, I don't appreciate the condescending tone of one of the posts. It's not good form

In fact there were dead fish, I thought I had mentioned it. The live ones couldn't move and were stopped from getting to the top from the dead ones (I know I didn't mention that bit).

There might've been filtration that I didn't see, however the large amount of filtration doesn't make up for the fact the fish couldn't move (in my opinion). Regardless of how long they were in there for.

Please keep your comments polite, I don't want to get into arguments on the internet. It's unsightly

Edited to add: the picture I linked to was clearly not a picture of the tanks on the day i went, it was an illustration of the size of the tanks in general.

 

[Paul_MTS]

I will have a pretty good view into shops compared to most people as I run a large fish house (successfully).

For someone to walk around a shop with thoughts of disgust mulling over in there head and then not to talk to anyone in the shop about it is a "poor show". There are many simple explanations for things which the public don't look into. Or even down to no fish knowledge..... "those fish are dead 'cus there floating!"... "no there butterfly fish" that has to be a favorite.

Scared of having a shouting excuse in the middle of a shop is a rubbish excuse not to discuss the 'issues' with the staff. There's no need for shouting if you conduct yourself correctly. But instead you went for the keyboard warrior route, too afraid to speak up to someone in store so went to gossip online and report them.

I have had a RSPCA visit at another store before because someone did exactly what you did. saw some fish suffering, too scared to ask a member of staff so ran off and reported us. We had recently kindly taken on several large koi from a customer closing down a pond, these fish went straight into the main pond (quarantine in a small shop is luxury!) so unfortunately the all the fish came down with a disease, the pond was covered during treatment, extra aeration added but still fish were gasping, which did look bad to the eye.

When the RSPCA got to the shop, we talked them through what was going on, and they sniggered saying another waste of time.

Give yourself a pat on the back!

 

[monkeywobbler]

There's no need for the attitude, for goodness sakes.

 

[cane76]

i could not agree with paul more
i think the livebearer system in the pic looks fine

 

[Saedcantas]

Couldnt agree more with Paul and Andy, having worked in the aquatics trade for 8 years myself, I've seen it all and heard it all when the RSPCA come knocking about something overblown or out of context.

You owe those people whose livelihood that shop is at least a chance to explain to you what you think you might be seeing.
If someone came to your house and saw you had kids who were dirty, if they ran straight to social instead of asking where they'd been playing, because they were afraid of a shouting match. Would you be dismayed and upset?

Dont forget, it's one thing saying if aq knowledgable organisation checks them out then good, why not. But this is the RSPCA we're talking about, they've got about as much fishkeeping knowledge generally as a cardboard box...

No one is giving you attitude, just disagreeing with the way you handled something and now you dont like that. *shrugs*

 

[andywg]

In fact there were dead fish, I thought I had mentioned it.

You didn't.

The live ones couldn't move and were stopped from getting to the top from the dead ones (I know I didn't mention that bit).

So you are claiming that every fish tank was crammed full of dead fish at the surface and was so full of live ones that they couldn't at all move? I am going to quote from more jokey forums to comment on this:

Photos, or it didn't happen.

I refuse to believe they have managed to fit so many fish in a tank that they actually cannot move. WIthout photos to back up your claim you are exagerating, and thus making your argument weaker.

Also, lots of dead fish in every tank sounds like fairly harsh disease hit. The downside to a centralised system is the rapid spread of disease. Had you asked you could have found out if there were any issues.

There might've been filtration that I didn't see, however the large amount of filtration doesn't make up for the fact the fish couldn't move (in my opinion). Regardless of how long they were in there for.

Are we here talking about your exagerated claims fo tanks so full of fish taht movement cannot occur, or that a very large fish is in a tank too small for it. To follow on from Paul's points on large fish, I have heard (I believe from CFC) that someone once just dumped a large fish on an lfs desk and ran. They now have two choices: kill it or put it in a tank too small and ask some of their customers with larger tanks (when they come in) whether they have room for the fish.

To a casual observer who just walks in this look sbad, but its by far the lesser of two evils. Obviously if you don't even make contact with the store then you will never know the reasons behind why a certain fish is in a certain tank.

And I do like the "In my opinion". Surely whether a fish can move or not is far from opinion, but fact. Either a fish can or it cannot move. One can add on that they can move freely or have space to move more naturallys, but not being able to move is a fairly easy call to make.


Now I am not a huge fan of sterotyping, but this looks to me to be a classic 6 month syndrome case. This is where someone keeps fish and comes on here for up to 6 months and starts to lear about how one small group of peopel keep fish. They then see a different way and cannot yet comprehend just how many different variations of keeping and selling fish there are and instantly hate the new and unfamiliar style.

Rather than trying to lear about the different way the first port of call is usually here toi complain where others without much experience chime in with "OMG that's terrible" without really understanding.