I have no experience with Petland, but I do have some with Petsmart. Even worked there for a while. You can ignore almost everything on those cards: They usually understate the potential size of the fish (sometimes by half, at least one case by a factor of five), the minimum tank size, and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to what they say needs salt and what doesn't. They sell true brackish fish and crabs with no mention of salt, and softwater fish with mention of salt. Their color coding for compatibility is also a fairly poor guide.
Some of it's okay, but yeah, personally I only use it to get a very general idea of what I want and then I go home to research. If the fish doesn't fit with me and my tanks, I go back to look at another fish and come back home to research that one.
They say the Clown Loaches grow up to 9 inches (maybe 6 inches, I can't remember). I made the mistake of buying them and then finding out they can grow up to 18 inches (something like that). Fortunately they're in a 60gal right now, and I've already got my eyes peeled at every 100+gal tank I come across. Two died (might have been internal parasites, or some sort of wasting away disease, but they died before treatment could kick in. Well, Little Guy With Spot seemed to be getting better before I found him and his mouth stuck in the suction of the filter, dead (must have been too weak, still, to get away, even though I had wrapped the filter input. He found a little spot that was exposed). There's just Big Pig and he's going strong.
Thanks for the info on the Gouramis. I wanted them but at the mention of salt, I turned away, as I know I have some fish that are sensitive to salt (just can't remember which, lol; I think the Plecos mainly, though I could be thinking of the ADF in another tank). When one store says it, I'll take it with a grain of salt, but when both stores in the city say the same thing, it makes me hesitate and wonder if it's right. Thank God they invented the internet, lol
