OMG - PetCo Gig Harbor RANT!!!
Was in PetCo yesterday to pick up some fish food for my daughter's guppies and went to visit the Oscars (I'll be setting up a 120 soon and want to get a single oscar plus some tank mates). I was HORRIFIED at what I saw!
OMG, 2 oscars swimming in the tank, absolutely covered with ick spots. One was the tiniest oscar I've seen (1.5 inches or so), really beautiful coloring, so lively and cute, but so sick He was swimming up to me and making eye contact - it took all the restraint I had to not buy him and try to nurse him back to health in my daughter's spare 1.5 gallon cube thing (heat and salt and I could maybe cure the ick within a week or two then put him into my 46 until the 120 is ready - this oscar is sooooo tiny).
The other oscar was a little more lethargic, much bigger (3.5 inches), much more sick looking. Then, as I stared into the tank for a bit, I noticed a little face bobbing up and down inside a lava rock decoration in the tank - another oscar, so ill he seemed to have simply gone in there to wait for death. He couldn't even swim anymore. Then I saw a rotting oscar corpse (another little one, about the same size as my little friend) dead and stuck to the filter. He must have been in there for awhile because he was already falling to pieces.
I didn't know if I should cry or vomit. How can they do this to the fish?! I will NEVER EVER spend a single dollar at PetCo again.
PetSmart, for all their flaws, keeps their fish soooooo much healthier and in better conditions. There's no comparison. Living in a pretty rural area, I'm quite limited and there are no LFS's around (closest is 35 miles away) so PetSmart will have to do for routine purchases, but PetCo = NEVER AGAIN!
So what can I do about this? Call the manager? Complain to corporate HQ? Will they even care?
And do I follow my gut and go get that little oscar who touched my heart, and try to save him? I understand that by getting him, I'd be supporting the store, but OMG it was so hard to walk away from him...the tank is marked "under observation" (what a joke) so I'd have to fight them just to be able to buy him to try and save him.
GAH! What do I do?! I can't get his little face out of my mind...
Was in PetCo yesterday to pick up some fish food for my daughter's guppies and went to visit the Oscars (I'll be setting up a 120 soon and want to get a single oscar plus some tank mates). I was HORRIFIED at what I saw!
OMG, 2 oscars swimming in the tank, absolutely covered with ick spots. One was the tiniest oscar I've seen (1.5 inches or so), really beautiful coloring, so lively and cute, but so sick He was swimming up to me and making eye contact - it took all the restraint I had to not buy him and try to nurse him back to health in my daughter's spare 1.5 gallon cube thing (heat and salt and I could maybe cure the ick within a week or two then put him into my 46 until the 120 is ready - this oscar is sooooo tiny).
The other oscar was a little more lethargic, much bigger (3.5 inches), much more sick looking. Then, as I stared into the tank for a bit, I noticed a little face bobbing up and down inside a lava rock decoration in the tank - another oscar, so ill he seemed to have simply gone in there to wait for death. He couldn't even swim anymore. Then I saw a rotting oscar corpse (another little one, about the same size as my little friend) dead and stuck to the filter. He must have been in there for awhile because he was already falling to pieces.
I didn't know if I should cry or vomit. How can they do this to the fish?! I will NEVER EVER spend a single dollar at PetCo again.
PetSmart, for all their flaws, keeps their fish soooooo much healthier and in better conditions. There's no comparison. Living in a pretty rural area, I'm quite limited and there are no LFS's around (closest is 35 miles away) so PetSmart will have to do for routine purchases, but PetCo = NEVER AGAIN!
So what can I do about this? Call the manager? Complain to corporate HQ? Will they even care?
And do I follow my gut and go get that little oscar who touched my heart, and try to save him? I understand that by getting him, I'd be supporting the store, but OMG it was so hard to walk away from him...the tank is marked "under observation" (what a joke) so I'd have to fight them just to be able to buy him to try and save him.
GAH! What do I do?! I can't get his little face out of my mind...