Pet Store angry rant

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Rayen

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 25, 2009
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Location
, Manitoba, Canada
The basic story is this: I've been looking for 3-4 newts (more specifically, fire bellied newts) for my 40 gallon tank the last month or so. So not only have I been to pretty much every single pet store within an hour's drive, I've also been horrified beyond words at what I've seen at all of these stores. (and also very sad that there aren't any newt breeders and that I live in Manitoba with it's severe lack of amphibians)

I too used to be one of the many naive new pet owners that believed that those that worked in certain departments of pet stores at least knew the basic care of the animals they were working with. I can't even imagine why pet stores try to promote the fact they know anything about animals at all. How many times have I heard people try to give new fish/aquatic animal owners advice on setting up new tanks to completely destroy how to properly cycle a tank. I was in a store yesterday with a man who worked in the fish area trying to convince a customer to buy seven goldfish to cycle their tank. Granted, I did not know how big the tank was, but seven goldfish for a cycle is never needed. You could cycle the tank with basically nothing but a pinch of fish food and be fine, everything tells you to severely under-populate a tank if you are going to use live animals. Goldfish are probably the most disgusting fish you can get, and need huge amounts of space despite what the common fish bowl looks like. It's not going to cycle faster with more animals, it will just make the water disgusting more quickly and ruin the water you're trying to maintain a healthy growth of good bacteria in.

But my main horror lies in how pet stores all seem to have this single thought process with species mixing in far too-small habitats and trying to convince people that the animals can live together fine. Ever see a bird cage with several mystery types of finches in it? Or an enclosure with things like rabbits and guinea pigs crammed together? Or even horribly aggressive animals like fire bellied toads or paddletailed newts mixed in with fire bellied newts?

It just doesn't make sense to me. In both business terms, and moral terms. The animals they sell, while making a smaller profit generally than the supplies that go with them, are still there for making the store money. Why then, would a pet store owner find it in their best interest to jeopardize their products by placing them in over-crowded cages or with different animals? It seems a bit hypocritical to me, paying money for animals that are most likely going to die due to stress or injuries from being forced into tiny areas mixed in with various animals. Paddletail newts ripping off fire bellied newt's limbs, or fire bellied newts/toads poisoning each other with their two different secretions. A rabbit crushing a guinea pig, or the guinea pig biting the rabbit. It not only makes the store look bad, thus lowering their sales overall as disgusted costumers leave, but also eats into their overall profits as they either have to take the animal to a vet, or simply losing the animal and the initial investment in them.

I will agree that in some cases these animals can live together, and in some cases many of these animals would be found in close proximity in the wild. But the fact remains that the average pet owner cannot care for two different species in one small habitat properly. 'The wild' is not a small tank, or small cage that is thrown into a room and given minimal care. It is a wide open, huge space that the two animals will likely rarely, if ever, interact with each other. Look at things like finches, for instance, the right kinds can be mixed fine as long as they have pairs to couple up with of their own kind. Certain, more aggressive finches, cannot be matched with other certain kinds of finches well, not to mention they should never be mixed with hook-billed birds like budgies or small parrots. But a new bird owner isn't necessarily going to know this, and the pet store is most probably not going to know this. All it ends up doing is stressing whatever animal is forced into the equation and ends up with a higher percentage of dead pets.

Sorry, I know everyone has their own angry story about pet stores, this is just one thing that really doesn't make sense to me. If anyone could explain the reasoning behind it, that would be great. Not that it would necessarily make me feel better about the whole thing, but I would be a great deal less confused.
 
I have to agree with you. Pet stores know nothing (most of them!).

Just 2 days ago, I was at the pet store and the lady there said on how a crate is for when you're at work for and you put your puppy in it so it doesn't poo around the house... WTF? lil pups can't stay in a crate AT THE LONGEST 2.1/2 to 3 hours. Basically most of the things they are saying are bull.
 

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