Pets At Home

[fry_forever!]

People keep on blowing on about how P@H are a franchise and so some are amazing. I worked for them for several months and frankly, the whole thing is run from the top. Every store has the same policies, procedures, training, etc. Sure, some are run by particularly shoddy managers and some have poor staff but you get that with any shop or any service in the world. My bone with P@H is the awful training, the arrogance the area/district management exhibits, the lack of information on the various species that exist (most people I worked with thought that knowing that you shouldn't keep a red-tailed and rainbow shark together made them experts) . . . I have so many horror stories from working there and I had to compromise my morals so many times on instruction from the area managers and other higher authorities in the company that I had to leave.

And that's before I get annoyed at the number of dead fish in tanks and gobby sales staff.

Frankly, if a P@H store is truly amazing it will be breaking every rule in the P@H handbook. Most seem OK because people don't stick around long enough to find out the nasties.

I would "rise above them" and stop harping on about P@H but when animals are dying daily as a result of their profit-mongering, I find it hard to keep calm.

It's hard to be told that you need to sell goldfish into 10 litre tanks "or else" and that a totally un-cycled tank with a ton of new fish requires no additional water changes and that if you advise customers to do even tri-weekly water changes on a tank with ammonia problems you are stepping right out of line. I've had disciplinary proceedures brought against me for fabricated complaints that clearly never happened and yet they didn't mind that I had to essentially spell suffering and death for dozens of fish a week because store and company policy required me to sell fish into pretty dire situations. Sure, they tick all the right boxes and tell you to bring your water in for testing and don't let you make massive, obvious mistakes but I know what the supplier is like and the fact that if you refuse to sell fish out of a bay that had a sick or dead fish in (as the company says you should), you'd effectively have to close the entire aquatics section. Every shipment had dozens of sick and dying fish, every tank had sickly fish, every day dozens would die from the main bays or isolation tanks (which doubled as disease treatment and new-fish quarentine tanks). Only one treatment was permitted at my store and it seems this happens all over. A super-strength whitespot treatment was used as a cure all for everything. No fish recieved decent remedial care even when something as simple as some different food or a salt bath could cure them. Hell, I rescued some newts from there who were literally being abused. Not just "not treated very well". They were living in water that has at least 2ppm of ammonia and nitrites, they had missing limbs from being put into water that was 7-10 degrees C too warm and they had been bought into the store on a whim. This is NOT an insolated incident.

Yes, I know a lot of my bugs where with what happened at my store but from the reaction I got from upper management when I complained, this stuff happens up and down the country, even in the very best stores. I was literally told to shut up and stop moaning or leave and take my "new fangled" opinions elsewhere. I don't know how many times I heard "there are many different opinions in fishkeeping", even when I was providing scientific evidence for why I was right and all they could do was say "our experts have made our policies and they are correct". Even the training literature had a "learn this and forget everything else and please keep your opinions at home" clause.

Obviously some stores will be good, especially if the manager has the balls to ignore some of the training stuff and policies. Plus every so often you find a real fishkeeper working there who knows about all the fish (or will help you research if they don't know), who can talk to you about plants with competence, can help you set up a variety of different systems and take you step by step through any kind of cycle you want to try, who knows about the various temperature, pH and hardness needs of many species (beyond "soft water", "hard water", "tropical" and "coldwater") and generally knows their shizz. Didn't have one of those working at my store. I was the baby there and yet still knew more on fishkeeping than everyone else, possibly put together.

So, I hate P@H. I only shop there in an emergency. Pity, really, as I made some friends there and it's the closest pet shop to me.

This is amazing. It's great to hear a completely personal account of the stuff that happens there.

In the one in Manitoba, the fish all have 5 gallon cubicles, (except for the bettas, of course) and the employees all encourage you to buy tiny tanks for the bettas, usually a 1/2 gallon. They tell you to cram goldfish by the dozen in a 2 gallon tank, and to put all fish in tanks right away, regardless of the cycling process. I also noticed that their fiddler crabs have no land outside of the water, and are forced to stay in the water. The reptiles actually didn't look particularly bad. The leopard geckos even had Repti-carpet, which is a 50x better than sand. But really, the fish are the worst. My heart just breaks when I see them. But I know nothing can really be done, and I'm not going to start a 50 hour rant.

would love to hear the rest of the iceberg tbh

TOTALLY agree. It's so sickening, but a really interesting read.
That sounds really bad. What I mean is that, it's really intriguing that all of this cruelty just really has to do with profit...

 

[Assaye]

did you work at several branch's of P@H, or just the one, assaye?

cos if you worked at more than one i could probably take you comments on board.

I have worked at one, have intimate knowledge (i.e. I may as well work there) of another and very good knowledge of a third. Those are just my local ones. I've been in 10-15 P@H stores across the UK and they've all be the same or worse than my 'home' store.

As I said in my main post, I appreciate that many of my niggles are about my specific store(s). However, many of them are also about wider P@H policy and information that has been passed down from area and district managers (who manage multiple stores). Of course, the whole chain can't be blamed for the abuse and neglect that happens at one store (such as keeping fire bellied newts in tanks that are heated to around 27-30C and the animals suffering fatal burns) but P@H can be blamed for the inaccurate information they spread in their training documents and policies.

I haven't read all these posts and have always prided myself on the fact I don't form opinions on things I don't truly know about. But I will say this *in relation to something I read in this thread*..........the wages you are paid is 100% a complete irrelevance to how well you can/should take care of the fish in ANY pet store and it disgusts me that anyone would imply differently. That goes for all animals. If you are a true animal lover you can and will find a way to be kind, responsible and decent. Training, wages and the particular store has NOTHING to do with it!

Unfortunately, when the choice is keep your job and stay at university or run out of money and drop out, it's pretty hard. Obviously I didn't let any direct harm come to any animal but short of walking out the first time I had a fight with my manager, there wasn't much I can do. I would have been fired if I didn't compromise my morals. As it is, I left after a time because I felt very strongly about it.

As it was, I was frequently told off for giving customer service that was "too good". I would spend ages with each customer making sure they knew what they were getting into, had a decent list of book and web resources to refer to and that they knew all about the tank cycle and how things would go in their tank. My manager just wanted me to crack on and meet the daily target for sales. I felt I could change the store from the inside and now I just feel sad that I allowed myself to take on the job in the first place.

 

[JoshuaA]

I felt I could change the store from the inside and now I just feel sad that I allowed myself to take on the job in the first place.

A lot of us dream we can do things like that and that's not just about P@H, after all we are all just the "little guy/girl" in this world. We're rarely capable of making a significant impact on anything serious.

As for AceofSpades saying that these threads are unfair then I completely disagree. It is clearly apparent there are more than just a few odd stores which are keeping poor standards, for this to effect the public opinion negatively then it is perfectly acceptable.

What you are saying about LFS being awful is what we are saying here, we're all referring to our local P@H and it just happens to be a big store chain, if I knew of a store of similar atrocities I would be negatively reviewing them.

Once again, if you don't like the thread don't come here.

 

[ian]

Assaye, if what you're saying is true, you really need to talk to trading standards, rather than emailing head office, or blurting them
on here.

 

[Ace Of Spades]

I felt I could change the store from the inside and now I just feel sad that I allowed myself to take on the job in the first place.

A lot of us dream we can do things like that and that's not just about P@H, after all we are all just the "little guy/girl" in this world. We're rarely capable of making a significant impact on anything serious.

As for AceofSpades saying that these threads are unfair then I completely disagree. It is clearly apparent there are more than just a few odd stores which are keeping poor standards, for this to effect the public opinion negatively then it is perfectly acceptable.

What you are saying about LFS being awful is what we are saying here, we're all referring to our local P@H and it just happens to be a big store chain, if I knew of a store of similar atrocities I would be negatively reviewing them.

Once again, if you don't like the thread don't come here.

Firstly, dictating where I can and can't go is not a job you should be concerning yourself with as it is none of your business.

And the fact is that you're not allowed to negatively review LFS's on here, that has also been discussed before. So that is not fair.

 

[JoshuaA]

I felt I could change the store from the inside and now I just feel sad that I allowed myself to take on the job in the first place.

A lot of us dream we can do things like that and that's not just about P@H, after all we are all just the "little guy/girl" in this world. We're rarely capable of making a significant impact on anything serious.

As for AceofSpades saying that these threads are unfair then I completely disagree. It is clearly apparent there are more than just a few odd stores which are keeping poor standards, for this to effect the public opinion negatively then it is perfectly acceptable.

What you are saying about LFS being awful is what we are saying here, we're all referring to our local P@H and it just happens to be a big store chain, if I knew of a store of similar atrocities I would be negatively reviewing them.

Once again, if you don't like the thread don't come here.

Firstly, dictating where I can and can't go is not a job you should be concerning yourself with as it is none of your business.

And the fact is that you're not allowed to negatively review LFS's on here, that has also been discussed before. So that is not fair.

Once again, if you don't like the thread don't come here

It clearly wasn't me dictating where you can and can't go. If you read the sentence properly you will quite possibly realise it was just a suggestion, a logical one at that. The difference is if I was dictating where you can and can't go I would of said

Once again, don't come to this thread

Which I didn't, so don't bother trying to make it out like I gave you instructions. So the suggestion as logical as it was seems to have been perceived as instructions.

And the fact is that you're not allowed to negatively review LFS's on here, that has also been discussed before. So that is not fair.

So we can tell people to avoid a store if its bad and when they ask why we just remain silent? So they go there and fall into the same trap you might of done? When someone says they're going to buy livestock from Store X yet you know they have a serious outbreak of disease currently you let them? You can't review something negatively and then try tell someone to avoid it by giving an account of your previous visit. At the end of the day its all our decision where to go, it's normally better to have some general reviews of the place prior to purchasing. After all shouldn't these fantastic stores be rewarded by reviews over the poorer ones or less fantastic ones. In some serious cases we should be aware of atrocities.

Like this thread has already began doing we're filtering out the bad P@H stores and we're actually getting an idea that some of it isn't so widespread as we think. It appears some of the stores are actually not so bad whereas the majority are.

 

[james_fish]

It's hard to be told that you need to sell goldfish into 10 litre tanks "or else" and that a totally un-cycled tank with a ton of new fish requires no additional water changes and that if you advise customers to do even tri-weekly water changes on a tank with ammonia problems you are stepping right out of line. I've had disciplinary proceedures brought against me for fabricated complaints that clearly never happened and yet they didn't mind that I had to essentially spell suffering and death for dozens of fish a week because store and company policy required me to sell fish into pretty dire situations.

Hi Assaye, interesting read. It a shame your P@H experiance didn't turn out to be as enjoyable as mine is turning out to be.
I don't know wether things have changed since then, because I don't know when you did your time there?

Could you tell me what documents that policy is under? Because I can't find it in mine.
Is it anywhere near the bit that says you have the right to refuse sale of pet under ANY circumstances?

James.

 

[JoshuaA]

It's hard to be told that you need to sell goldfish into 10 litre tanks "or else" and that a totally un-cycled tank with a ton of new fish requires no additional water changes and that if you advise customers to do even tri-weekly water changes on a tank with ammonia problems you are stepping right out of line. I've had disciplinary proceedures brought against me for fabricated complaints that clearly never happened and yet they didn't mind that I had to essentially spell suffering and death for dozens of fish a week because store and company policy required me to sell fish into pretty dire situations.

Hi Assaye, interesting read. It a shame your P@H experiance didn't turn out to be as enjoyable as mine is turning out to be.
I don't know wether things have changed since then, because I don't know when you did your time there?

Could you tell me what documents that policy is under? Because I can't find it in mine.
Is it anywhere near the bit that says you have the right to refuse sale of pet under ANY circumstances?

James.

I think what she is implying is the instructions set from the store manager at the store she was working at were terrible. You may be a lucky one and I hope you keep up the good standards. Unless you're at the same store and possibly things have changed or not....

"The right to refuse sale of a pet under ANY circumstances" to be honest even at the LF/PS I worked at we were encouraged to deny sales but also encouraged to get as many as possible. I don't see many exercising that right. What Assaye is saying has been true for me as a customer, I was told not to do water changes even though my ammonia was 1ppm as I was completely unaware about anything further than they had told me. I was told it would be ok to ADD 5 guppies onto my 5 neon start fish... I still slap myself to sleep at night

I refused sales of birds and rabbits and rats etc when I worked at a Pet store however I did get told off on some occasions as the customers were "Borderline" questionable or that my reasons were based on assumptions of the way the customer had talked to me. For example I refused sale of a budige because the customer + friend was plastered, yet my boss came along took over and then they walked out with a budige as he asked the friend who wasn't drunk whether she would take care of it and he said yes so he got the sale in and made over £100 of her.

I refused to sell rats to a person because he explicity explained to me his daughter is heavy handed with everything and would likely be a bit rough with the animals so I said a small animal like a rat isn't going to be the best for her however friendly it is. He then continued to complain to my boss stating I had no right to make the "assumption" his daughter would be rough with it. Even though he had EXPLICITLY stated.

The more I think about it though, the more I see cracks in where I used to work compared to P@H, P@H were realistically a large scale version of where I worked. Though the larger you go the bigger audience your business will reach out to and having such a bad reputation isn't good for them. If anything I think P@H should retrain their staff and make an announcement about it.

 

[james_fish]

It's hard to be told that you need to sell goldfish into 10 litre tanks "or else" and that a totally un-cycled tank with a ton of new fish requires no additional water changes and that if you advise customers to do even tri-weekly water changes on a tank with ammonia problems you are stepping right out of line. I've had disciplinary proceedures brought against me for fabricated complaints that clearly never happened and yet they didn't mind that I had to essentially spell suffering and death for dozens of fish a week because store and company policy required me to sell fish into pretty dire situations.

Hi Assaye, interesting read. It a shame your P@H experiance didn't turn out to be as enjoyable as mine is turning out to be.
I don't know wether things have changed since then, because I don't know when you did your time there?

Could you tell me what documents that policy is under? Because I can't find it in mine.
Is it anywhere near the bit that says you have the right to refuse sale of pet under ANY circumstances?

James.

I think what she is implying is the instructions set from the store manager at the store she was working at were terrible. You may be a lucky one and I hope you keep up the good standards. Unless you're at the same store and possibly things have changed or not....

"The right to refuse sale of a pet under ANY circumstances" to be honest even at the LF/PS I worked at we were encouraged to deny sales but also encouraged to get as many as possible. I don't see many exercising that right. What Assaye is saying has been true for me as a customer, I was told not to do water changes even though my ammonia was 1ppm as I was completely unaware about anything further than they had told me. I was told it would be ok to ADD 5 guppies onto my 5 neon start fish... I still slap myself to sleep at night

I refused sales of birds and rabbits and rats etc when I worked at a Pet store however I did get told off on some occasions as the customers were "Borderline" questionable or that my reasons were based on assumptions of the way the customer had talked to me. For example I refused sale of a budige because the customer + friend was plastered, yet my boss came along took over and then they walked out with a budige as he asked the friend who wasn't drunk whether she would take care of it and he said yes so he got the sale in and made over £100 of her.

I refused to sell rats to a person because he explicity explained to me his daughter is heavy handed with everything and would likely be a bit rough with the animals so I said a small animal like a rat isn't going to be the best for her however friendly it is. He then continued to complain to my boss stating I had no right to make the "assumption" his daughter would be rough with it. Even though he had EXPLICITLY stated.

The more I think about it though, the more I see cracks in where I used to work compared to P@H, P@H were realistically a large scale version of where I worked. Though the larger you go the bigger audience your business will reach out to and having such a bad reputation isn't good for them. If anything I think P@H should retrain their staff and make an announcement about it.

Hi Josh. Its more company policy at a big store like P@H, not so much manager based but I understand you fully.

As far as im aware the store I work in is good. We all enjoy our work and love working with the animals and fish alike. I treat the fish as i'd treat my own. We take care of the animals, they are our first priority, this reflects in the low loss of animal life.

I generally feel sorry for people who have bad experiance with P@H stores because I know we are a good company. Like you said the more fans you have, the more haters you have. But it's just retail life, its just different when it involves living breathing things as opposed to clothes and food.

Another thing i'd like to say Josh, is that no matter what I sell, or don't sell for that matter my wage will not increase or decrease.

James.

 

[Wills]

Okay going to chip in again out of curiosity here. Dont get me wrong not having a go but its a major niggle that gets me angry all the time and I have to admit this chain does get me to the point of going to the RSPCA, trading standards etc but then thinking whats the point.

This is a few questions and thoughts for James primarily, not as an attack on you but to further my understanding please dont think this is getting at you but it is a very heated subject for me -

Pets at home has to be responsible for thousands if not hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of common plecs, bala sharks, clown loaches, gibbiceps, black ghost knife fish, oscars, parrot fish, severums, goldfish (common and fancy) being pumped into our hobby, into homes that are just not suitable often at all I have seen them selling goldfish to tiny tanks, they might think they have taken the moral high ground by saying no fish in unfiltered tanks but I remember my first tank was from them and that was 5 goldfish in a 10 gallon tank, see what Im saying?

Ive stepped in on many occasions to stop sales at pets at home near me for things such as angel fish in 5 gallon hexagon tanks.

And for me the sale of these fish in any shop is often inexcusable, while fish like the common pleco and oscar are amazing animals they should not be as readily available and in both my pets at home store there must be a good 50-60 at least per week sold but where are they going to go? Like I say the mass availablity of these fish is inexcusable now because of the discovery of smaller alternatives which I will forever be repeating like a bulldog plec instead of a common plec and a zebra loach instead of a clown loach and orange platies instead of goldfish or rosy barbs instead of goldfish. I mean at the end of the day its not even good business esp with the plecs Ill use your snowball plec as an example, what are they worth these days £15-£25 surley you are more likley to sell a fish called snowball which is black with white spots on at £15 rather than a brown sucker fish for £3.99 you must be able to imagine the pester power of a daughter that wants a fish called snowball hell even I want one because they look awesome.

Lets even bring this down a level to the smallest of small tanks that pets at home sell around the 5 gallon rating - why do they not stock micro fish to go with them.

For the above two issues there is just no excuse if I as a hobbyist can get hold of those fish at the snap of my fingers a multi million company should be able to get them farmed in a second.

So first question is, why do pets at home stock all the mentioned fish in such massive numbers and then sell them to often any tank with water in?

Is this a choice of individual managers as to how many of these massive fish they order or is it just a company policy to stock X amount of common plecs per week and sell X amount of goldfish per week?

Do your stores order lists have any smaller species of plec listed?

Next thing that is probably a border line RSPCA matter in my mind and while it affects the whole aquatics industry with pets at home as the biggest retailer surely it would be their responsibility to pursue the most humane ways to keep fish.

So that said, the cycling advice that pets at home offers is just rubbish its total nonsense, knowing how you contribute to the forum (james_fish) I would trust your advice would be along the same lines as we give out here ie a controlled fish in cycle or a fishless cycle but the majority of pets at home advice on the cycle is - put a few flakes in your tank with your filter on and this will start your cycle and by the end of the week it will be safe to put fish in when in reality no its not youve still got an other 4 or 5 weeks to go until there is no nitrite or ammonia in the water.

In my opinion telling people this is okay to expose fish ie an animal to these kind of poisons is animal cruelty plain and simple.

Again like I say Im not attacking you personally james but how can you defend that. Im not a hippy that is going to protect the life of every tetra in the trade but surley pets at home have a responsibility to protect the fish they trade by selling them to an informed owner. I regularly give advice out to people setting up tanks on how to safely do a fish in cycle why cant pets at home? It takes me 20 mins to type out the same piece of text over and over tailored to who ever does that and when someone is spending hundreds of pounds on a glass box surley they can get the same level of attention?

So basically Im asking your oppinion on the mass sale of fish into half cycled tanks by pets at home?

Like I said in there, while I accept that all of the above mentioned problems are present in nearly every pet shop in the world pets at home have the power and therefore the responsibility to educate people properly with the problems I raised and because of the size of the franchise it would not take long for the efforts of any responsible changes they did make to be felt all over the industry - its a bit like how Asda stopped giving out carrier bags and started using re usable bags only. (I agree thats a bigger issue that effects the whole world but its just an example of a large retailer utilising their size to spread a level of responsibility)

Like I say Im not attacking you James but I am genuinley interested to know how as proud employee you feel about the above discussed issues .

Wills

 

[littlemissjo]

my quick opinion

i think in my local P@H they just dont have the training, and so just sell you fish judging by whats infront of them, not thinking the fish will grow loads, or breed like crazy!

they sold me 1 x common plec, 3 x silver sharks and 1 x red tailed black shark for a 30 litre tank - yikes!!!!
It was my first tank so i knew no better, but quickly learnt and got a much larger tank and moved the fish in as soon as i could, i prop didn't cycle as much as i should, but i had to move the fish, and they are all alive and doing well 9 months later.

i am sure there are some good ones, but its different staff in each and its down to each member of staff at the end of the day, and mine, are not great!

but to be fair, nor are my local maidenhead aquatics, i have found a family business about 30mins drive away, but they are fab and well worth the extra drive!

 

[stubert]

find it funny how the people with 1-2k posts are moaning about seeing this sort of topic before, well, go figure welcome to a forum

It's the fact that the same topic is posted almost every week and it always comes to the same conclusion. Pets At Home are getting a bad rep because they're a chain so they're easier to pin point and group against, when I know for fact that their are many many bad LFS's out there and they will not get bad reps as they are not all under the same name. So I see this topics as very unfair.

Well, not all of us have seen this conclusion, so, don't read the topic.

And hows it not fair? if Pets at home didn't want bad rep they wouldn't give people a reason to do so. Like saying its not fair to shun mcdonalds for selling bad food when kebab shops do the same. They want the name to be big, if they don't provide a good service then of course people will moan, and because theres so many of them collective people will moan resulting in this sort of topic.

My point wasn't that they didn't have bad stores, but because they're a collective store rather then independent, they are the only ones who ever get bad press. Where as there are countless LFS's that are a lot worse then P@H will ever be.

And the solution to your first comment, use the search feature it doesn't use that much initiative maybe something you are lacking.

Well, the people who own the stores who do provide good service and good fish shouldn't affiliate themselves with the pets at home name, and if for financial or whatever reason they couldn't open their own shop, then they have to deal with being tarred with the same brush. Thats that.

Well, i can choose between either making my own topic (with no similar topic on the first page) or bumping an old topic, not much difference between the two tbh.

 

[stubert]

find it funny how the people with 1-2k posts are moaning about seeing this sort of topic before, well, go figure welcome to a forum

It's the fact that the same topic is posted almost every week and it always comes to the same conclusion. Pets At Home are getting a bad rep because they're a chain so they're easier to pin point and group against, when I know for fact that their are many many bad LFS's out there and they will not get bad reps as they are not all under the same name. So I see this topics as very unfair.

Well, not all of us have seen this conclusion, so, don't read the topic.

And hows it not fair? if Pets at home didn't want bad rep they wouldn't give people a reason to do so. Like saying its not fair to shun mcdonalds for selling bad food when kebab shops do the same. They want the name to be big, if they don't provide a good service then of course people will moan, and because theres so many of them collective people will moan resulting in this sort of topic.

My point wasn't that they didn't have bad stores, but because they're a collective store rather then independent, they are the only ones who ever get bad press. Where as there are countless LFS's that are a lot worse then P@H will ever be.

And the solution to your first comment, use the search feature it doesn't use that much initiative maybe something you are lacking.

Well, the people who own the stores who do provide good service and good fish shouldn't affiliate themselves with the pets at home name, and if for financial or whatever reason they couldn't open their own shop, then they have to deal with being tarred with the same brush. Thats that.

Well, i can choose between either making my own topic (with no similar topic on the first page) or bumping an old topic, not much difference between the two tbh.

Dunno how i managed to double post

 

[james_fish]

Hi Willis, im glad you took the time to ask me these questions and hope I can answer them in a good, honest way.

Pets at home has to be responsible for thousands if not hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of common plecs, bala sharks, clown loaches, gibbiceps, black ghost knife fish, oscars, parrot fish, severums, goldfish (common and fancy) being pumped into our hobby, into homes that are just not suitable often at all I have seen them selling goldfish to tiny tanks, they might think they have taken the moral high ground by saying no fish in unfiltered tanks but I remember my first tank was from them and that was 5 goldfish in a 10 gallon tank, see what Im saying?

Out of the above listed my particular store sells common Pleco's, Fancy and Common Godlfish & finally Clown Loaches. I can tell you 9 times out of 10, the fish we sell are Goldfish normally to new hobbyists. I agree with you on the size issue which differs from person to person, 5 in a 10 gallon is ridiculous. As a matter of fact 1 in a 10 gallon is not ideal, but people (especially new to the hobby) are not willing to spend money on a tank suitable for a (eg.) single tail goldfish which are suitable for ponds or a 30/40 gal+. You should also know Goldfish can be kept in a 20 gallon and live for years and years, so when you hear like a 30 gallon minimum, this is not true at all. Another thing I'd like to say on the size issue is that, if ever a Pleco is brought back to the store because it has outgrown its tank, we do not put it on sale we staff either take it home ourselves (well the ones who keep fish) or we arrange for an LFS's near us to take it from us as they have the facilites to keep it.

And for me the sale of these fish in any shop is often inexcusable, while fish like the common pleco and oscar are amazing animals they should not be as readily available and in both my pets at home store there must be a good 50-60 at least per week sold but where are they going to go? Like I say the mass availablity of these fish is inexcusable now because of the discovery of smaller alternatives which I will forever be repeating like a bulldog plec instead of a common plec and a zebra loach instead of a clown loach and orange platies instead of goldfish or rosy barbs instead of goldfish. I mean at the end of the day its not even good business esp with the plecs Ill use your snowball plec as an example, what are they worth these days £15-£25 surley you are more likley to sell a fish called snowball which is black with white spots on at £15 rather than a brown sucker fish for £3.99 you must be able to imagine the pester power of a daughter that wants a fish called snowball hell even I want one because they look awesome.

As for this point, your speaking to the wrong guy. I don't determine sales in any way shape or form. I recommend you personally write to head office. I do love Snowball Pleco's.

So first question is, why do pets at home stock all the mentioned fish in such massive numbers and then sell them to often any tank with water in?

Business. Not to be rude, but yeah. I have my own limits as to what to sell to what size tank, and i'll say that I have never sold a Common Pleco to anyone. You wouldn't believe how easy it is to get someones attention on another fish that is more suitable for their tank eg. an Oto instead of a Common Pleco or a Honey Gourami instead of a Golden Gourami.

Is this a choice of individual managers as to how many of these massive fish they order or is it just a company policy to stock X amount of common plecs per week and sell X amount of goldfish per week?

Im not sure on this, im sure there is a set amount of fish delivery to each store. Obviously more to a store with high fishsales like Stockport.

Do your stores order lists have any smaller species of plec listed?

My store is not a big fish store, but we do stock Oto's and Butterfly Pleco's (which are actually hillstream loaches, which i have asked my manager to change the label on, but thats another point)

So that said, the cycling advice that pets at home offers is just rubbish its total nonsense, knowing how you contribute to the forum (james_fish) I would trust your advice would be along the same lines as we give out here ie a controlled fish in cycle or a fishless cycle but the majority of pets at home advice on the cycle is - put a few flakes in your tank with your filter on and this will start your cycle and by the end of the week it will be safe to put fish in when in reality no its not youve still got an other 4 or 5 weeks to go until there is no nitrite or ammonia in the water.

The cycling is an issue definately. Do you think, Willis, that someone looking at keeping fish is going to buy a brand new tank get all excited and then have to wait 1/2 months for a tank to cycle? Or do you think they will wait 7 days to add there new fish? Controlled fish in are recommended, 5 danio's wait 3/4 weeks add your next batch. Feel free to come in for a free water test every weekend.

You speak in general of the negatives Willis, not everyone at pets@home is fish fish fish. We have designated fish people, knowlegdable and fair. I try to be fair. I like my job and enjoy working with Animals and Fish alike. Im sorry you feel like you do about Pets At Home but that's just your opinion, we have a hell of a lot to do, we are not selling Mars Bars and cans of diet Coke at the end of the day.

From Pets At Home perspective, Business is Business. My job is my job.

Sorry for any spelling and grammer mistakes.

I don't have a problem with you asking me these questions as im one of the few Pets at Home workers on here.

James.

 

[Wills]

If im honest now your responses are just so crap it just highlights the problems with pets at home Im sorry to be so brutal.

The situation you highlighted with the common plecs just are not viable, the fact that you are in that situation ie having to ship off fish that your store massively miss sold to other fish shops to deal with the problem. It goes back to what I was saying RESPONSIBILITY if that is the situation then you proved via your argument that your shop completely lacks it.

The goldfish answer you gave as well, the way people "on the internet" keep goldfish is the humane way at the end of the day you would not keep a group of stocky 6 inch tropical fish like lets say firemouths (ignoring the obvious aggression issues) its just not a humane way to keep them. Of course you can cram 6 goldfish into a 20 gallon tank but the standard of life is going to be shocking.

And I have accepted you brushing off the cycling thing as business because its what you always hear but yeah your right no one would do it but surely with a pet shop as massive as pets at home could they not run a filter system with no fish feed it with ammonia and sell cuttings of their sponges to customers for X amount of money. I dont know how viable it is but its an idea off the top of my head.

As a big business I come back to the point of saying responsibility, if people will not buy a tank and wait for filter to mature sell them a mature filter.

I didnt ask about your thoughts on store bought bottles of filter supliments. I mean that in its self is a shocking trading standards issue but it would be hard to prove unless the investigator had an exceptional knowledge of fish and tanks etc.

Its just an other sign at how outdated the fishkeeping industry actually is Im not trying to make it seem like an epic battle for good fishkeeping but not solving the problem of people not cycling tanks properly is kind of like cars without seatbelts....

In my opinion Assaye is 100% right and what you have said James is just basically shrugged your shoulders i could go on to list a number of metaphors but at the end of the day hobbyists are right chain stores are wrong. I can appreciate you are just doing a job and you do get enjoyment out of it but based on the answers you gave of just shrugging of things saying its just business does not cut it as an answer.

Wills