Misinformation about rabbits

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uh, wow. I used to not know they were induced ovulators, but that was before I had them. if you're in charge of them at a shelter, you'd think you'd know more than I knew in my first week as a new bunny owner *facepalm*
 
I feel bad, we actually have that cage right now for Faith.. But she's only 9 weeks old(7 when we got her) and we're working on building a NIC cage ASAP. It was only meant as a temporary cage because we came across the right bunny at the wrong time. She also gets a few hours of outside time every night.
 
temporary with many hours out of it is different than "hi, you live in this now". you know the cage is small. you know to build a NIC cage. not so much with the person who knows nothing of bunnies and is told by a pet store employee "it's just fine."
 
I got my bunny from a pet store, i know shame shame. :embarrassed: but i did think it was really funny when the baby bunnies were labeled holland lops and then the person who sold her to me said, "just so you know these bunnies grow to be 12 pounds at least" :craziness
 
Sophie is a New Zealand/ Flemish Giant mix. Her original family dumped her when she got too big. :? What part of Flemish GIANT made them think she would stay small?
 
I tell my husband that about our chickens all the time. They're jersey GIANTS. He wonders why my rooster weighs 17 pounds and is almost 3 feet tall.
I guess no one listens.
 
Whitelop, my almost 3 yr old has his own rabbit, he feeds her, he plays with her, he loves on her with supervision. He also has his own fishtank, he also feeds them. Obviously I do their cleaning, but they're never too young to start learning responsibility!
 
Heh...

My seven year old cousin got a little 3 gal fish tank for his birthday. His mom bought him the tank and supplies, and my mom took him to buy him fish. They get to the pet store and the guy in the fish department says, "I won't let you get anything but a Betta, for that size." Not a goldfish, not even a few neon Tetra's - when those usually live happily in a bowl. This tiny tank even came with a pump! So my mom looks at the Betta's... And he informs her she should get two females, because males can't be together and to only feed them FOUR PELLETS once a week. Yep...

Not only did the one Betta kill the other(too small a tank for them to live peaceably together), but ONE fish was eating ALL the pellets, so the one that died was not only being tortured, but starving as well. I had to inform my aunt of all the problems they had and what they needed to do to keep the last one alive.

I've also had pet store people recommend various, horrible wood chips for bedding, and had others recommend crappy, non-nutritional food to many pets as well.

Not to mention the number of cruel(and often unsafe) devices pet owners can get these days for their pets, and are told are the best, when these owners don't know how to use them properly in the first place, and that item gets turned into a cruel weapon.

I'll turn this bad stuff around though, and tell you about one time that I decided to test out a pet store employee on their knowledge. I told them I wanted the BEST dog food for my dog, as he had epilepsy, and that I was looking for something without preservatives, because they gave him seizures. Not only did she recommend the food I ALREADY had him on(she did not know), but she also pointed out the reasons it was so good for him. I was quite happy with her knowledge on dog food and even spoke to the manager about her. I wish there were more knowledgeable people out there working in pet stores.

I also must say, my buns are currently in pet store cages - they both came to my home in them. But Crush has had his for three years and gets lots of out time, and Fluffy JUST got here the other night, and is getting as much out time as Crush now(whereas she used to live in it 24/7) - I'm trying to bond them while I put aside to get the supplies needed for the huge NIC cage I want to build. I plan to build a two or three-tier cage though, with a wooden frame, so it takes up less floor space, as my house is quite limited in size.

That said, I do recall many years ago when these cages were acceptable, if not considered large at the time, with the added exception of giving the bun's roaming time and exercise outside of it. If I hadn't found this forum before I got Crush, I never would have known that so much had changed.
 
yeah, a lot has changed since the last time I had a bunny too... like we didn't give him hay other than one of those compressed alfalfa cubes as a treat now and then. that was like 20 years ago, and what we knew about bunnies we learned either from the shelter my parents got him from or from library books that could easily have been out-of-date. in retrospect, we fed him way more carrot than we should've, too.
 
Rescuemom wrote:
My seven year old cousin got a little 3 gal fish tank for his birthday. His mom bought him the tank and supplies, and my mom took him to buy him fish. They get to the pet store and the guy in the fish department says, "I won't let you get anything but a Betta, for that size." Not a goldfish, not even a few neon Tetra's - when those usually live happily in a bowl.
Click to expand...


Just to point something out, goldfish cannot live happily in anything other then aMINIMUM 10 gallon tank. Goldfish are extremely filthy fish with a high waste output that contaminates their water very quickly and the amount of cleaning it would take to keep the water at a good level would not be healthy for the fish anyways, not to mention they are a cold water fish and therefore require a lot more air flow then a warm water fish, something a little 3 gallon tank could not supply enough of. Goldfish are quite the misunderstood fish and need a lot more space then people give them credit for.
 
I think one thing few petstores explain is that the larger fish tanks are much easier to clean and to maintain proper balances than the small tanks. I wonder how many are put off by fish-keeping if they start with a too small tank.
 
Kipcha, goldfish easily attain sizes of 2' in length, the recommended tank size is 55gal and up for comets ("feeders") and 29 gal for fancies. Sorry to correct, but I figured since we're talking about Misinformation, we'd get the accurate numbers. Gold fish don't take long to foul a 10 gallon, and the only way they "grow to the size of the tank" is bad water quality stunting their growth. A 3 gal is only good for 1 betta, UNLESS you provide lots of decor to hide and break the line of sight. I had 4 bettas (3 females, 1 male) in a 10 (no problems at all with aggression) until the weather caused a fungal infestation that wiped out all 4 bettas within a week, despite medicating. Like bonding rabbits, it all depends on the individual, my fiance's female will kill ANYTHING in the same tank! And a betta's stomach is about the same size as it's eye, so 4-5 pellets PER FISH is about right. [/soapbox] sorry, I feel the same way about my fish as I do my rabbits...

2 of my rabbits are in petstore cages, the other 2 are in wire breeder cages. But I provide hay on the wire floor in addition to their hay rack, and a pad for them to lay on. And everybody gets out time daily. (They have to take turns though)
 
I have to say that I've had plenty of bettas in the past. We had two females that lived in our community tank and did quite well. The females can be aggressive, but it really depends on the fish. We also had one male in a small one gallon tank with a filter and heater and he lived for over one years in there. He seemed very happy. Then we put one male in with 2 females in a 10 gallon tank and they were very content living together. Bettas are about the only fish that don't need filters because they breathe air with lungs much like a dolphin would. I've done a lot of research on bettas because I wanted to breed them at one point(it didn't pan out, they didn't want to breed. Oh well.) Speaking of bettas, that blue stuff in the water when you get them is a chemical that helps keep the algae out of the little cups, well it burns the bettas fins and gills. Thats why sometimes when you get them you see that they have a black ting to the edges of their fins and gills, its ammonia burns. Its awful the way they ship them and the way they keep them. I've gotten into fights with pet store employees over the care of the bettas. (Literally, I got into a screaming match with a guy who thought he was a genius and gods gift to the world, he quickly got put into his place by the fish guy.)

I don't know much about goldfish, but I will say that I had a gold fish that lived in a big glass bowl (like a decorative tall bowl, not like a serving dish or anything), he had no filter and just a few rocks on the bottom for color. He only had one eye, and I had him for 5 years. I cleaned his bowl out every other day or so, and he did well. He seemed happy and he would come to the surface if you tapped his bowl a few times, because he knew the food was coming. I was also in the 5th grade when I got him, he was my 5th grade graduation present. Man, I loved that fish.
 
Oh and I will also say, since we're on fish right now, that I bought a Red Blood Parrot Cichlid. Shes a real beauty, if you like mutants. She is a hybrid of a red devil and mitius cichlid. I had no idea what I was buying when I bought her, I just knew that I wanted one, because they're so pretty. We got her as a semi baby. I did some reading on them and found out that I got a mutant fish. They can't close their mouths because of their genetics and since they can't close their mouths they have to chew their food with their throat muscles. Its very sad and a lot of them don't survive, but mine has done very well. We've had to find the right food for her but we've got it down now and shes almost two years old.
Anyways, I went into a petsmart after I found out what she was and asked the guy if he knew anything about them. He said that they were South American cichlids (they don't have a nationality because they're man-made) and some other bs that I knew wasn't true. So I told him what they REALLY were. He was shocked. I've also talked to a guy who runs an exotic fish store, who refuses to sell the parrots because they aren't right and he said that we in American get the crappy ones from Japan. We get their 'cull', so the ones they don't want. They keep the ones with perfect mouths.
We then went to another fish store in our area and looked at the parrots. Even though they are mutants, she is my special girl and I love her dearly. As we looked at the parrots there, we saw that they all had closed mouths and we asked the guy about them. He knew ALL about them. Told us what we already knew and we felt comfortable enough with it to get ANOTHER sad mutant fish! I figured, if at least one gets a good home out of these five babies, thats okay. We knew what she needed and we love her. She is smaller than our other one, but they stick together. They are the bull dogs of the tank.
So even with the no information with received when first buying her, and the wrong information later. We finally figured it out and now we have two mutant fish that live happily in a 55 gallon tank with an African cat fish and two golden tinfoil barbs.
 
I almost bought a pair of BP's when I sold my piranha, but ended up going with more tigerbarbs for my son's "dinosaur" tank. It's difficult for some people to think about animals as living, breathing things that feel, from dogs, to rabbits, to fish, to hermit crabs... pet stores RARELY provide the proper information or products, and it becomes the responsibility of the owner to research proper husbandry. The only problem there; the average person doesn't do the research! That's why it's up to us responsible owners to educate the oblivious. And I have NO trouble doing so!
 
When I was younger, we had a 10 gallon tank and three fish. I don't remember exactly what breed. Like goldfish, but smaller, and different colors. My oldest brother's fish was blue, my other brother's fish was pink, and mine was "yellow"(I told my mom I wanted a yellow fish, as it was my favorite color at the time, but the fish was clear, even though my mom swears to this day that it was yellow.)


Actually, they looked like this fish:
the-yellow-fish-small.jpg


Anyways, they all lived peacefully, even though I fed them one night and overfed them, they just pooped a little extra(and I got in trouble) but they were healthy. They went in a 5 gallon tank when we cleaned their regular tank with no problems as well. But then the tank cracked and we had to give them to my friend, whose mother accidentally used rat poison instead of fish aquarium cleaner. :rollseyes
 
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