I'm Furious!

[seizethecupcake]

I am LIVID right now. I just went into a large chain store in the US, a place that has NO business selling fish, yet there they were. They were stuffed into tiny, cramped tanks. A male betta in with guppies, several large puffers crammed into a tank. It just breaks my heart. I wanted to buy every one of them to give them a good home, but a) I don't have the space, and b) they would see that as "demand" and stock more. It's so wrong

 

[Randomitity]

Makes 2 of us but everyone is trying to make a buck and you can't really make them stop even if you try unless you get a large enough group to get a senate or something of that nature to ban them from some of the chain stores but other then that all you can do is complain and watch it go through one ear and out the other

Edit:
Guess I should point out I have butted heads with a few of these guys a few times. Heh...

 

[Baccus]

I don't know how good your SPCA is over there, but maybe a quiet word in your local branches ear about the fishes conditions and be able to quote each fishes tank size requirements, water temp and ph as each species will have different requirements. As well as stress to them the cruelty due to stress to the fish by having them in crammed conditions with the wrong types of tank mates. It might not stop the shop from selling the fish but if you make enough of a stink with your local SPCA they might be able to enforce better conditons for the fish kept in the store. I am pretty sure that one of the SPCA and RSPCA's creeds is "ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL", well fish fall in to that somehwere so there has to be some types of leglislation regarding their store conditions.

Newspapers are always good to vent some steam, my local paper has an SMS page where people state all their gripes etc. Failing that talk to a reporter, most businesses usually see any publicity as good except when it drives customers from their stores. And a news paper wanting some news to fill it's pages might give your story some space.

In Australia we have two current affairs shows that are always looking for stories, your bound to have similar type shows over there and they might like to stick a thorn in a big corporations foot, our current affair shows seem to take great delight in messing with the big boys. In fact any time these current affair shows get a court ordered injunction they take great delight and make a story about that, wearing the injunction as some form of badge of honor.

 

[Better is Betta]

When I went to pick up my discus the other day I noticed a betta dt in a clear container apparently designed for bettas and I swear it was as big as a coffee cup. This poor fish was sitting on the counter and his water was putrid. I said to the guy I"ll buy that fish because I didn't care what breed he was exotic or plain I wanted him out of that pathetic container. He said its not for sale. I told him if you don't put him in a bigger container he's going to die. You know what the Neanderthal said... Oh no they live in puddles of water. I walked out shaking my head. I wanted to argue with him but how do you get through a brick.

 

[Randi]

The ASPCA does not have any regulations regarding fish care. They will rescue fish if an individual calls and tells them they can no longer care for their pets, but thats about it. Unfortunately, I believe that the original post is probably about Wal-Mart and they generally do what they want. They do not treat their human employees much better. I say, boycott! I haven't stepped foot inside a Wal-Mart in 9 years and it feels great!

 

[seizethecupcake]

The ASPCA does not have any regulations regarding fish care. They will rescue fish if an individual calls and tells them they can no longer care for their pets, but thats about it. Unfortunately, I believe that the original post is probably about Wal-Mart and they generally do what they want. They do not treat their human employees much better. I say, boycott! I haven't stepped foot inside a Wal-Mart in 9 years and it feels great!

You're right, it was about Wal-Mart. I don't generally go there, but I ran out of dog food around 10pm and everything else was already closed.

 

[Bignose]

Ok, Ok, there are some stores that shouldn't be selling fish. Not to put too blunt a point on it, but we've had thousands of these kinds of threads. Is there anything new to say that hasn't been said thousands of times before? You are literally preaching to the choir here. The average forum member -- a person who went out of their way to join a discussion group about fish -- is just a tiny minority of fish owners. Unless you have some action plan on how to change that large majority of people who just don't care enough to do anything, I don't think that there is much more to be written here.

I hope this isn't me coming off sounding like a jerk, but I just really don't understand the point of ANOTHER one of these kinds of threads.