Yetti
Fish Crazy
In my experience there are no good fish stores. They all are either bad or not so bad, even aquarium adventure (just nice show tanks, but nothing good to buy except aquarium accessories).
Anyone Get Ripped Off By A Local Store?
- Thread starter stargirly1208
- Start date
Kribster
Fish Fanatic
No-one will have heard of it, but i found Byrkley Park aquatics center (in England - the origional byrkley lol) is very good. Herbert and his staff are all superb, and they have a really dark room where the walls are fish tanks. and its not like a tank with fish in either - each tank is a display tank full of carefully placed plants, stones and lumps of bogwood. He stocks loads of fish. little pricy tho, and Pets@home offer a 7 day garuntee, which is really useful for tetras etc.
K
K
GRJ
Fish Crazy
I went and got all my rock from my lfs for my mbuna tank, and it cost me £60, as i walked out of the aquatic department, back through the garden centre part, i noticed they had the same rock outside for 80% cheaper per kilo. I couldnt be bothered to take it all back so just thought 'bugger it, i will keep this rock!'! Robbing gits! GRJ 
Azaezl
Fishaholic
I've had the opposite happen, I've ripped off the shops 
So far at my local p@h I've had a massive piece of mopani wood for free, cause I stuck it inside a tank i was buying and the silly person on the till didn't ask me to take it out so she could scan it so i thought, oh well your loss. I've convinced naive staff that the panda corys I'm buying that are supposed to be £4.95 are standard bronze and £1.99 each lol.
The other shop I frequent is more knowledgable / cleaner / better all round but I've gotten away with alot there. It's the way they do things, they put a barcode on the guarantee and write next to it x 2 or whatever amount you've bought, well if you get someone who's not paying attention at the till(which is a good distance away from the fish dept) you only pay for 1 cause they don't type in x whatever on the till. Few weeks ago I was supposed to pay roughly £30 for 3 frogs, 3 mountain minnows & 6 oto's I got them for £8! Couldn't get out of there fast enough lol!
Another time at my local p@h they had a tank for sale at £25(usually £40) it had been reduced because the heater was broken, why they'd left the broken heater in there I don't know but when we got to the till my husband kicked up a fuss saying how are we supposed to keep tropicals without a heater, so the guy gave us £15 off the tank so we could buy a heater, which we didn't cause I had a spare anyway!
On the whole p@h is pretty reasonable for dry goods and the fish are cheap but they aren't always good stock, on the reverse my local garden centre has alot of good staff, good selection of fish that are usually in ok conditions but there dry goods are horrendousley expensive.
So far at my local p@h I've had a massive piece of mopani wood for free, cause I stuck it inside a tank i was buying and the silly person on the till didn't ask me to take it out so she could scan it so i thought, oh well your loss. I've convinced naive staff that the panda corys I'm buying that are supposed to be £4.95 are standard bronze and £1.99 each lol.
The other shop I frequent is more knowledgable / cleaner / better all round but I've gotten away with alot there. It's the way they do things, they put a barcode on the guarantee and write next to it x 2 or whatever amount you've bought, well if you get someone who's not paying attention at the till(which is a good distance away from the fish dept) you only pay for 1 cause they don't type in x whatever on the till. Few weeks ago I was supposed to pay roughly £30 for 3 frogs, 3 mountain minnows & 6 oto's I got them for £8! Couldn't get out of there fast enough lol!
Another time at my local p@h they had a tank for sale at £25(usually £40) it had been reduced because the heater was broken, why they'd left the broken heater in there I don't know but when we got to the till my husband kicked up a fuss saying how are we supposed to keep tropicals without a heater, so the guy gave us £15 off the tank so we could buy a heater, which we didn't cause I had a spare anyway!
On the whole p@h is pretty reasonable for dry goods and the fish are cheap but they aren't always good stock, on the reverse my local garden centre has alot of good staff, good selection of fish that are usually in ok conditions but there dry goods are horrendousley expensive.
Robotochan
Fish Fanatic
I have bought fish from the Pets@Home in Dundee and Kirkcaldy and the Big Dobbies in Dunfermline and haven't lost a single that wasn't my fault. They are all reasonably priced for fish. I'd say the Kirkcaldy P@H is the best I've been to so far. Never been ripped off by any of them but I did get a couple of quid off some plants because they misread the writing on the bag 
I've had the opposite happen, I've ripped off the shops
So far at my local p@h I've had a massive piece of mopani wood for free, cause I stuck it inside a tank i was buying and the silly person on the till didn't ask me to take it out so she could scan it so i thought, oh well your loss. I've convinced naive staff that the panda corys I'm buying that are supposed to be £4.95 are standard bronze and £1.99 each lol.
The other shop I frequent is more knowledgable / cleaner / better all round but I've gotten away with alot there. It's the way they do things, they put a barcode on the guarantee and write next to it x 2 or whatever amount you've bought, well if you get someone who's not paying attention at the till(which is a good distance away from the fish dept) you only pay for 1 cause they don't type in x whatever on the till. Few weeks ago I was supposed to pay roughly £30 for 3 frogs, 3 mountain minnows & 6 oto's I got them for £8! Couldn't get out of there fast enough lol!
Another time at my local p@h they had a tank for sale at £25(usually £40) it had been reduced because the heater was broken, why they'd left the broken heater in there I don't know but when we got to the till my husband kicked up a fuss saying how are we supposed to keep tropicals without a heater, so the guy gave us £15 off the tank so we could buy a heater, which we didn't cause I had a spare anyway!
On the whole p@h is pretty reasonable for dry goods and the fish are cheap but they aren't always good stock, on the reverse my local garden centre has alot of good staff, good selection of fish that are usually in ok conditions but there dry goods are horrendousley expensive.
I dont think I could do what you do, I'd see it as stealing. My p@h isn't the best, but its practically the only fish shop close to me and even then I couldn't do the things you wrote without feeling guilty afterwards.
Heather.
Fish Addict
Yeah I got ripped off the other day by Pets at home.. Bought this guy to try and save him.. They wouldnt give me a discount on him..Got charged £3.99.. 
He died 4 hour later..
He died 4 hour later..
xxBarneyxx
Fish Aficionado
It seems to be difficult to find the perfect fish store.
There are three near me that I use a couple that I avoid.
Out of the three I use:
1st one has excellent staff (very friendly and helpful and know what they are talking about), really healthy fish (dont think any fish I have got from there ever had any problems and I have bought a LOT of fish from there) and good prices. The problem being is that they only do FW and they dont have a very big selection.
2nd one has healthy looking fish and good staff. Also has a Marine section but I have too often seen dead fish in there that look like they have been there for a long time (at least a day) and this really puts me off. If they just went round the tanks every so often to remove the dead fish they would have had loads of money from me.
3rd one has a very good selection of both FW and Marine fish but I only ever get the weekend staff who dont seem to know much and end up chasing fish around with nets for hours. I have had mixed results with the fish I have bought. The Silvertips I got from there are really healthy are doing great. The BN plecs I got from there though didnt even survive the trip home (I think mainly due to the stress of being squshed and chased around for ages by the guy trying to net them out).
If I could get the staff from shop 1 and the stock from shop 2 and 3 I would be very happy
There are some really bad shops near me as well unfortunetly. One had tanks that where so dirty you could barely see the fish. All the fish had really bad ICH but where still being sold. Typically this is also the shop that is closest to me.
My sister in Northern Ireland just bought a tank for her kids. The shop sold her a 15g tank and at the same time sold her 6 White cloud mountain minnows and 4 goldfish. They told her just go home fill the tank with water and put them in! She phone me to ask me why they where all dying and they hadn't even told her to put dechlorinator in the tap water!
There are three near me that I use a couple that I avoid.
Out of the three I use:
1st one has excellent staff (very friendly and helpful and know what they are talking about), really healthy fish (dont think any fish I have got from there ever had any problems and I have bought a LOT of fish from there) and good prices. The problem being is that they only do FW and they dont have a very big selection.
2nd one has healthy looking fish and good staff. Also has a Marine section but I have too often seen dead fish in there that look like they have been there for a long time (at least a day) and this really puts me off. If they just went round the tanks every so often to remove the dead fish they would have had loads of money from me.
3rd one has a very good selection of both FW and Marine fish but I only ever get the weekend staff who dont seem to know much and end up chasing fish around with nets for hours. I have had mixed results with the fish I have bought. The Silvertips I got from there are really healthy are doing great. The BN plecs I got from there though didnt even survive the trip home (I think mainly due to the stress of being squshed and chased around for ages by the guy trying to net them out).
If I could get the staff from shop 1 and the stock from shop 2 and 3 I would be very happy
There are some really bad shops near me as well unfortunetly. One had tanks that where so dirty you could barely see the fish. All the fish had really bad ICH but where still being sold. Typically this is also the shop that is closest to me.
My sister in Northern Ireland just bought a tank for her kids. The shop sold her a 15g tank and at the same time sold her 6 White cloud mountain minnows and 4 goldfish. They told her just go home fill the tank with water and put them in! She phone me to ask me why they where all dying and they hadn't even told her to put dechlorinator in the tap water!
moo_moo_19
New Member
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2007
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i love my p@h there is a guy there that i go to forall my addvice and so far he has been spot on he knows his stuff i love my p@h and also i support my local shop there also realy friendly people as yet i dont have any fish so we will c
Tokis-Phoenix
^_^
It's not that I'm writing the store off, it's just it makes me mad when he tells me it isn't his fish, when it clearly was. I've seen other stores carry those fish and they were in wonderful condition, just they're soooo far away from here (i'm at college). I will see if his new store will look better, this store is a hole in the wall and he never takes care of his tanks... i don't know, i just wish there was a good local store closer to toledo... i'm still searching. I found one and i have to wait until wed. to see if he actually ordered my rams for me like he said he would. if he's trustworthy, he's definitely got my buisiness!
So tell me, what could he have done about it? Its not him who's at fault, its his suppliers- sometimes lfs do just get bad batches of fish in stock, its not the lfs's fault as they can't do anything about stuff like that. Just because others stores had german blue ram fish which were thriving, means that they probably got theirs from a different supplier.
(ps: You should really acclimatise fish for a minimum of 30mins or more).
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