The Puffer Forum

Tell me about your walmart fish experience Good or bad.

If you search you will find tons of threads about this very subject.

And the thought here seems to be do NOT every by them. Not only do you usually end up with a very sick fish, you also make walmart think it is a good idea due to the fish selling and they just go back and buy more

Hello GSPlover and welcome to The Puffer Forum. I see you have a couple new fish friends . Here is a great link to read on proper care.

library/puffers-in-focus/an-introductio ... d-puffers/

Welcome to the group GSPlover . Wal-Mart does take good care of their fishes well most of the time. But I use to but alot of fishes from Wal-Mart way back and they seemed like they did a pretty good job. Only 2 Wal-Marts around me take better care of their fishes then the other but they are the only 2 that still sale live fishes. Must had major complaints on how their fishes looked. Btw, love your sig. That is too funny. I love humor .

FADE2BLACK_1973 wrote:Welcome to the group GSPlover . Wal-Mart does take good care of their fishes well most of the time. But I use to but alot of fishes from Wal-Mart way back and they seemed like they did a pretty good job. Only 2 Wal-Marts around me take better care of their fishes then the other but they are the only 2 that still sale live fishes. Must had major complaints on how their fishes looked. Btw, love your sig. That is too funny. I love humor .

Wow FADE2BLACK you have some of the rarer Wal-Mart that keeps there GSP in brackish and give the proper care instruction. We certainly need more Wal-Mart like that.

Fade you must of the only walmart in the world that takes care of their fish, all the walmarts around here have fish with Ich, all the puffers usually have IP's and tons of dead fish in every tank

I got my three from a walmart because I'm a noob lol They had way too many in too small of a tank, but they were pretty actively swimming around and I didn't see any dead ones. Their bellies were all white. I wasn't there when my husband picked them up a couple hours later, but when he brought them home and they were added to our tank, one of them was a very dark color. The other two stayed light and have always stayed light. The dark one we almost lost and I believe he was full of IPs. He was concave and eventually refused to eat, appeared to have gone blind and was bumping into things in the tank when he would decide to get off the gravel, which was rare. I even found him stuck to the filter one day and thought for sure he was gone. Fortunately, he was okay once I got him off the filter. Part of his issue could've been that I was also misled into housing them all in a 5 gallon tank (like I said, uber noob). There is a happy ending though! I treated for the IPs and probably got lucky with my med choice. I also changed them all over into a 40 gallon, which isn't the proper size for the three, but will work til I find 90+ gallons or (ideally) multiple 30+ gallon tanks. After the treatment and a little targeted garlic soaked feeding, he came around. He's just as active and brightly colored as the other two now. He's also the only one of the three that will get really dark while hunting and seems to stress into the dark colors more easily.

Unfortunately, back to the topic, when I went to walmart recently I couldn't help but check out the puffers. They were still way too many in the tank and two were dead. One was floating, the other had sunk and was half eaten. It was terrible.. we told the closest employee and he promptly removed the dead two. I'm sure they're in freshwater, as well, though I've never asked.

i happened to get my fish from walmart just about 1-3 weeks ago and now both have ich :/. i would post pics but they are too many kb. one is 450kb and the other 500kb

LOL, I meant to say "they do not take care of their fishes most of the time". Ok I let out a word and got it al turned around...lol. But the 2 remaining Wal-Marts that carry live fishes have cleaned up their act though. Looking really good but no brackish water tank for the GSP's or F8's though . Sorry I did not metioned that mainly all the other fishes was looking good except for the puffers if you dont grab them when they first get there. Even thought the little info tag says they are brackish water fishes .

<------ Noob here when i got my fish. Wal mart GSP but doing amazingly well now. I have had mine for about 3ish months. Went from thin nipped fins and thin yellow to bright green, healed fins, white round belly He is in a 27 gallon full SW tank now.

Wow--Wal-Mart to POTM--quite a turn-around for one little fish!

He looks happy now!

thanks so much He is finally coming around. He was very scared and shy when i first got him, but he is slowly getting better. When i first got him he was about to go into a 7 gallon with a goldfish and some cherry shrimp >_< luckily i googled before i put him in and lots of $$$ and time later he is doing great!

melbell, yours has even won puffer of the month, can't forget about that. He even looks like he could glow in the dark...lol.

I have never had a Walmart fish. I have looked at the fish in one local Walmart, and would not consider buying anything there.

I feel that way about most of the local chain shops as well, but my first DPs came from a chain store.

I happened to be in WalMart last night and did happen to look at their Puffer. No I did not buy any there. The did have some very nice looking Green Spotted PUffers but they did not look anything like the one I recently became the possession of. (I am convinced that I don't own him but he owns me!)

Their puffers were almost yellow in color with light brown spots and red eyes. My puffer is green with yellowish colored eyes. I have not been able to find any pictures on here or through google of puffers that look like them. They did have nicely round bellies and none were dark colored. Some were quite small, and others were larger, but all were active and content looking.

I am happy to say though that some employee of our WalMart has gone to the net and looked up the REAL requirements of GSP and replaced that horrible WalMart printed card that normally hangs above the tank! It says that they should be kept alone and that they can grow over 8 inches. That they require a minimum of a 30 Gallon tank and that they will need Brackish water when they are older - fresh water is only temporarily acceptable. It even explains that brackish water is made with marine salt and NOT aquarium salt.