The Puffer Forum

There is a fish store a good distance from me that sells literally any kind of fish you can think of (okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, but they sell a lot more than other stores): saltwater, freshwater, brackish. I was in awe. But...the store is absolutely filthy. The tanks are clean, but there is grime and dirt everywhere. This is not just a fish store. They also sell puppies, ferrets, reptiles, amphibians, etc. I did not look at anything but the fish while I was there but I read some reviews online about the conditions these other animals are kept in and they were disturbing but I didn't actually see it myself. All of the fish looked healthy but when I asked about the GSPs I was told that they were freshwater only and that people that put them in brackish or marine conditions are shortening their lifespans and abusing them. There was a porcupine puffer that was 8-10 inches long in a 5 gallon tank and he couldn't turn around but he looked really healthy and alert so maybe someone ordered him and he was waiting to be picked up. The dwarf puffers all looked healthy, so did the figure eights. There was even a small dog-face (I think) puffer. The point of my visit was to see if the amount I spent in gas outweighed shipping costs for future reference since I had heard they had everything. It's about even but it is always nice to pick out your own fish, you know? So basically the fish looked healthy but the place was a mess and had bad reviews and advice. What would you do?

filth, grime, dirt, disturbing, 8-10" puffer in a 5 gallon tank, the place was a mess, bad reviews, bad advice......
I'd walk
no, scratch that..........RUN!

lol I see your point. I was leaning that direction. Kind of wish I had a set up that big though, they had thousands of fish.

Another disgusting pet store with ignorant sales people trying to make a buck any way they can. No surprise here.

We expect too much from LFS or chain store staff, but dirt and grime would turn me off. Grossly under-housing for-sale specimens doesn't say anything positive about the store either. Crowding is almost universal, but a prky in that small a tank is pretty bad. I would walk.

I'd take it a step further, and provide the store owner/manager with a link to this forum and topic

The store is run by a middle aged man and what I assume are his teenage daughters and possibly their friends. Lots of young girls lol I told him that I had heard that GSPs were brackish/marine and that's when he corrected me. He seemed nice enough but I got the vibe he didn't take criticism well, even if it was gentle and nice. I, personally, hate confrontation so I didn't say anything more. The fish really did all look healthy and the tanks were clean but everything else was so dirty...it was gross. Like, if you touched the walls you'd have to brush your hand on your pants. Thank you all for the advice!

Yup run away

IMNSHO, the man with whom you talked is a poor example of what too many LFS owners and operators show. They have closed and uninformed minds. Fishkeeping is a learning process, and closed minds do not learn. My first GSPs were kept in hard, alkaline fresh water. They were severely overcrowded, but did quite well there for ~ ten years in my care, appearing fully healthy and having excellent color and high activity levels, and continued at least 5 more years under essentially the same conditions with a co-worker of mine at least another 5 years before he moved away (with the fish) and we lost touch. I have known other keeping them in soft acidic water which did not fare as well, but I do not know how well they were maintained. Their diet for me (and the co-worker who adopted them from me) was entirely FW snails (ramshorn and common pond snails). Brackish water fish can and do survive well in a substantial range of water conditions, but the fact that they can and do survive in FW does not, repeat not, mean that they are FW fish. Few true FW fish cannot survive well in SW for long periods to indefinitely in SW. IME, BW fish such as GSPs look and act better in BW to SW than FW, but they may well survive FW indefinitely if well maintained. True FW fish are not so adaptable, nor are true SW fish so adaptable to FW, The three separate categories do have real and valid distinctions. That mans insistence on their being FW proclaims his ignorance and/or failure to learn what BW fish are. It is sad and unfortunate. BW puffers are not FW Angelfish. They are in fact unlikely to live and do well long-term under optimum soft, acid FW conditions where angelfish live and do well. His attitude is not at all rare among fish store owners/operator. It is sad. I don't try to educate them either once I recognize their attitude. But I do not do business with them either. I will not reward proud stupidity.

FWIW

+1 I can't tell you how long it took me to realize that arguing with a store owner was pointless... People are set in their minds if they believe their knowledge is infallible... and more often than not they're grossly wrong.
Trying to educate customers is nearly as bad... Sometimes I wonder if people even care if what they know is true or not =/

Find the Yelp ad
Find the Google + page

Find whatever review sites you can that have them listed.

Best way to voice your concerns is to let the public know.

We also suffer from not understanding the largest number of our fellow "hobbyists". The majority of the folk buying or keeping a single tank expect fish to die young and routinely. They have no concept that the Neon Tetras can live a decade in captivity and the Corydorus cats 15 or more years. They may actually welcome the changes in the tank population as it lets them buy different fish...

NIMFT.

I guess we've been lucky in findng a couple of LFS that are run or managed by people who are fish-keepers. Once they realised that we knew about puffers and were prepared to share our knowledge and they recipicated where our knowledge was missing vis-a-vis salt water and especially reef tanks.

Finding a good LFS and cultivating it is the best way forward for both the indiviaul fish keeper and the hobby as a whole.

I won't go back there, it's a good distance from my house anyway so I can just buy online. It's hard to find a good fish store around here. I sometimes wish I lived in a big city like Detroit so that I would be overrun with fish stores to choose from lol Thanks for the help you guys =D

AnneMarie wrote:The store is run by a middle aged man and what I assume are his teenage daughters and possibly their friends. Lots of young girls lol I told him that I had heard that GSPs were brackish/marine and that's when he corrected me. He seemed nice enough but I got the vibe he didn't take criticism well, even if it was gentle and nice. I, personally, hate confrontation so I didn't say anything more. The fish really did all look healthy and the tanks were clean but everything else was so dirty...it was gross. Like, if you touched the walls you'd have to brush your hand on your pants. Thank you all for the advice!

yeah im the same way, I hate confrontation... id love to go and set one of the lfs near me straight on gsps and f8s, but I chicken out.