Red And Blue Betta Neglect

keithp

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Does anyone ever notice at the LFS that all the red and blue bettas are either stacked behind the other colored bettas, or always the ones who are in worst shape. My LFS has about 50 red and blue bettas, where the other 50 are a mix of rainbow colors, all the red/blue are ill or hidden behind the rest because they are so common people overlook them.

Sure, other colors are nice, but dont neglect them due to color. If red/blue doesn't sell, dont purchase them for your store!
 
I always look for either pink or purple or black Bettas so I always overlook the red/blue ones anyway. XD I bought Libra because he was a delta-tail, and he looked so pitiful.... D: He's the spiciest fish I've ever had, now! :D

When it comes to females, however, break out the reds/blues/whatever colours! I love ALL females! XD

(I tend to want male Bettas that look more "show-quality". I'm nuts. XP)
 
i very much doubt that the store gets to choose which colors they get shipped to them. and yes, most of them are red/blue. but it just so happens that red ones are my favorite :)
cheers
 
A LFS with 100 bettas :sigh: I'm lucky if mine has 10 and they're almost all red or blue with a black head. I don't know why they don't get some slightly better ones in and they could flog a whole little tank setup with one for kids instead of goldfish :good:
 
I've noticed that too, they're always the ones left to die because nobody wants them because they're so "common" its horrible! And I absolutely love the bright solid red ones! One of my favorite colors! But then again I love all bettas :D
 
My newest boy is a lovely Red/turquoise i wasn't even going for a betta but i've owned a blue (dear brom) and Hector (the red) now lives in his old tank and he's a happy little chappy, always bubble nesting lol.

IMO looks are nice but it's the personality that gets me, i've owned pink yellow red blue and brown (djin he's got a brown/black body with red and neon blue streaked fins he's a PK) bettas and tey've all been lovely wit their different little habits and traits.

I'm a sucker for light coloured ones but to me thet were all pretty :wub:
 
I don't know why they don't get some slightly better ones in and they could flog a whole little tank setup with one for kids instead of goldfish :good:

Because that amount of logic or sense would make most fish store owners' heads implode .
 
This is something i'd like to try and introduce at work (it will take time mind) and the bettas would need to be show cased more, at the moment they are just spread throughout the tanks in the shop. The kit could contain:

My first betta complete set-up:

1 5gal tank with lid
1 small net
1 bag of gravel
1 small filter
1 25watt heater
1 medium silk plant

Then all they need is food and a fish! I'm working on it but the tanks may have to be 13litre ones like the my first fishtank get-ups you get in Pets@home (my partner actually owns one of these and housed his rescue betta in it for quite some time not a bad tank IMO)

It's hard to convince someone with a buisness head tho
 
It's silly if they refuse , they could actually charge slightly more than a goldfish setup since you have the price of a small heater for one thing. You should add in a bottle of dechlorinator also, and maybe a cave /smooth ornament for the fish to hide in .

Plus add in a care sheet for the betta that's simple to follow, containg the usual basic info that a parent or reasonably intelligent child could follow, something like :

Temperature to set to for the heater

How much to feed

25-50 % weekly water changes ( ESSENTIAL!!! So many people think the filter will do all the work forever and we know it won't! )

How to service the filter ( mention to wash the sponges in old tankwater, not under the tap ect )


They could make a decent amount of money from that setup,( and money is what your bosses will want to hear about ) and with the 5 gal tank and basic equipment the betta could have a half decent home and care instead of one of the monstrosities posted in that other thread ( whih is a bonus for everyone, espescially the fish )
 
Thats what i was thinking (good point on the de-chlorinator by the way :good: )

We already hand out leaflets written by my boss about cycleing and how your filter works etc. No one gets fish unless they are willing to understand that, i always stand and talk them through it so they can't just take the leaflet and pretewnd they've read it. It may not please some people but IMO if the customer doesn't have the decency to listen to how to create a suitable enviroment for the fish they wish to buy then i aint serving them. My boss respects this and if he see's someone refusing information or someone telling us that cycleing is a load of ehem... rubbish shall we say, he "takes care of it". Most of the customers have been coming for years and have been with us since they started their first tanks.
But when it comes to bettas people just don't seem to get it, it's exactly the same with goldfish. Makes you want to really shout at some people, when i get that urge i just go and do some seriouse tank scrubbing :grr:
 
This is something i'd like to try and introduce at work (it will take time mind) and the bettas would need to be show cased more, at the moment they are just spread throughout the tanks in the shop. The kit could contain:

My first betta complete set-up:

1 5gal tank with lid
1 small net
1 bag of gravel
1 small filter
1 25watt heater
1 medium silk plant

Then all they need is food and a fish! I'm working on it but the tanks may have to be 13litre ones like the my first fishtank get-ups you get in Pets@home (my partner actually owns one of these and housed his rescue betta in it for quite some time not a bad tank IMO)

It's hard to convince someone with a buisness head tho


That's a good idea if you can pull it off, only thing I would change is live plant instead of silk plant, but thats not a big issue really. The best part is education, most workers tell false info about bettas, mainly about small space and no filter, and about feeding fish flakes to bettas, if they were better educated than people would learn better betta care, and then eventually by word of mouth betta owners will slowly educate more betta owners. :) Also since alot of bettas are purchased with ich, tell about medications too! Leaflets are a great idea as well as example of male or female bettas in community tanks, you dont know how many people think bettas can never live with other fish! If you get the right species, they can!

To purchase a betta at my LFS, you pick a fish out (or any amount of bettas no limit), buy it, put it in a bag, and take it home. The workers dont make you fill anything out, they dont tell you any info, and you can buy as many bettas as you want and they dont ask anything. Even a child can buy bettas!
 
It's great your boss knows of and encourages cycling and filtration , I think you've got a better chance than some of convincing him about the betta tank setups.

You could also try explaining about how goldfish need really large tanks, and why the small setups are useless for them ( which he probably already knows but may need reminding of ) You could propose that the store gradually decrease the number of young small goldfish they buy in, as this fools people into thinking they stay small,

and perhaps have a large show tank with some fully grown adult goldfish to illustrate just why those small setups are no good for them to show customers how a goldfish should be kept, how much work and expense it actually is. (due to large tank and large external filtration ) and why they are not so suited for a beginner or child as people might think.

Then you could propose that the goldfish setups be redone as betta setups ( 5 gal ones anyway ) in the way you've described, and if people want an alternative to goldfish for a smallish tank ( many people have something in the regions of 10-20 gallons ) then you could offer them a heater and some Gold barbs as an easy to care for fish that won't need to be upgraded to a huge tank, won't overload the filter and can be kept in groups safely in an average sized tank.

They look enough like common goldfish in shape and colour to satisfy most people , will eat pretty much anything you care to throw at them are a relatively hardy fish for a beginner to start with.


Your boss should be able to see the sense in that, and the store wills till make money from the sales of barbs and bettas.

As for tanks smaller than 5 gals, why not sell them as shrimp setups if the store's main small tank customer is kids? 3 gal kits ( for example) with a little sponge filter , some gravel , dechlor and a plant plus a pack of shrimp food and a basic care sheet, then all they need is shrimp. Most kids like bugs or weird critters, so a shrimp colony is ideal and easy for a child to look after with supervision.

I bought a 3 gal tank in a shop selling mostly toys last week, it came with a sponge filter, plant, fishfood, net , laminated plant background sheet and airpump to run the filter. It was marketed as a goldfish tank :grr: but will be perfect as a shrimp tank and is almost the same as the setup I described above.

That tank was on sale at £12.99, but it's original price was £20 and there were only 2 left in the whole store so people have been buying them at the full price.


It's worth considering.
 
You could propose that the store gradually decrease the number of young small goldfish they buy in, as this fools people into thinking they stay small,

and perhaps have a large show tank with some fully grown adult goldfish to illustrate just why those small setups are no good for them to show customers how a goldfish should be kept, how much work and expense it actually is. (due to large tank and large external filtration ) and why they are not so suited for a beginner or child as people might think.

One issue with that, feeder goldfish are sold small, and they wont ever get rid of those. And you can buy so many for cheap people will always be putting them in small tanks as long as they sell them as feeders, when they die they just buy more for a few cents, and the store makes profit off this.
 
They should still have a tank containg adult specimens next to the young ones. And a sign of some sort explaining that these adults are not some sort of abnormality or superfish, just normal adult goldfish, explain how big these fish can get, why they need space to swim ( much like bettas in fact ) and why they are often more expensive to take care of correctly than tropicals.

You would expect people to look at both and come to that conclusion by themselves but 99.9% of the time people don't engage their eyes and brain and really do need a sign or several to point out an obvious fact ( and even then a lot of them still miss it )
 

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