Wow! It really isn't fair sometimes!

[purplemuffin]

While traveling around to buy supplies for my first betta (eeee!!) we went to a few different stores..

The first store was the one I described earlier that had great care techniques and gave good advice on caring for bettas

The second was walmart!


Guess which had the most dead fish? The local fish store. They got a bad batch, in fact their shipment came in the day before we went to the store..and already there were 8 dead bettas! In just one day! The water was crystal clear, it was obvious something had happened. Maybe in the shipping process. The fish left over from their last shipment were healthy, and their sorority was EXCELLENT(they used a betta sorority in their tank where they sell some of the freshwater plants. SO fun to see in action, and none of them even seemed to have any nipped tails or anything!

Walmart the water was nasty. I mean a gross gross brown, and those fish..they were way more active! Clearly fighters, but it was such a shame, they were all put out of the way, I didn't even notice them at first---Picture one of the shelf walls--they were on the bottom two shelves in the shadows underneath all the other fish supplies. One of the employees didn't even know they sold bettas! Not a single dead one though, it was just dumb! They were also a very high quality, it was clear they were probably culls from a breeder, I saw some piebalds and even a salamander(but he didn't have the best looking tail)


It was just sad and confusing. You see a store working hard to keep their fish alive and healthy, and another store with no regard for their fish..and they get the healthy ones?? Yuck! That's the way life goes I guess. The poor girl at the aquarium store was so heartbroken when I told her I had found some dead bettas, she told me she had more in the back in worse condition and tried to only put out the healthiest fish.. Eugh! What a shame.

[peaches3221]

wow. thats just sad.

[Adastra]

Support the store with the best care practices--unless WalMart will let you take one of their fish for free. Finding ways to make bad stores lose money is even better than boycotting--but if they won't give you one, you should simply go back to the first store. It is inevitable that they get bad shipments now and again, and it's not their fault. If none of the fish jumped out at you this week, try again on shipment day next week.

[MrVampire181]

Yeah at least the one store cares, buy them there. Bad shipments are really common.

[Duskdog]

Bettas come in teeny tiny bags packed in another big bag packed in a box that's delivered via Fed Ex just like any other old package of collars or dog toys. They're sitting on a big metal truck for at least part of their journey, no matter how hot it is or how cold, and they rarely get heat packs that work, if they get any at all.

When you think about how far they're shipped and under what conditions, it's amazing that so many of them make it to their destination alive at all!

[wallywestisthebest333]

Sorry to hear about the casualties at your LFS. <=[ I feel bad for the owners and the girl that takes care of the bettas! :[

[purplemuffin]

Oh, absolutely! That water was disgusting, there is no excuse. Even a completely untrained eye could see that is a PROBLEM! It wasn't lack of knowledge, it was lack of caring!

They also had almost every one of the worst betta tanks available, not even any of the slightly closer to decent ones--biggest one was smaller than half a gallon! Yeesh!

I do hope our fish store gets better shipments next time! It was awful!

[MrVampire181]

Well they're shipped in just enough water to keep them wet...not even enough to keep them covered.

But if you get the quality ones from aqaubid they're shipped perfectly...why can't the VTs get the same respect??

[sunnymui]

I'm kinda glad that the Wal-Mart's in the UK don't have bettas, I think seeing what you've described would make me so angry and sad!