Modaz - you run your own business, know what you're talking about, and can supply good advice and weed out idiots who wouldn't care about the suffering and deaths of fish.
That's an entirely different situation, and you're doing good work.
nosoupforyou, you're entirely different as well from the type which seems to be under discussion.
For one thing, (among a whole bunch of others,) you're knowledgeable enough not to think you know everything about all fish everywhere - and there's a reason why that's described as a mark of true wisdom.
And I'll bet you made an effort to gain at least some info wherever possible about whatever fish did come in your store.
The difference is, you care about fish, and recognise pet fish have a right to decent treatment and a decent life and your main concern regards the realities involved - not your ego.
You're quite right, that not knowing about one type of livebearer certainly doesn't disqualify anyone from being generally knowledgeable, and the person in that case may very well have not come from the fish department, or could possibly be new and know little or nothing about fish.
And so, also, are other's making similar comments.
But actually, I think that's a good part of the point being made, that nobody can possibly know everything, but when they are convinced they do anyway, without even needing to conduct adequate research or actually considering basic facts, AND have been placed in a position of power over others, they're outright dangerous.
And when people are not only refusing sales on the basis of not-knowing-but-sure-they-know-best, but in charge of piscine welfare at a store, the determination of which is apparently based on guesswork that's 'unchangeably right because I've decided' - there are problems...
When I was phoning around trying to find a particular ich treatment, the fish expert described as being in charge of the department at one large store stated that I should treat it with Melafix.
Is this what their sick fish are treated with, regardless of actual cause?
Caution in assuring the welfare of helpless animals in one's charge is a good thing - the arbitrary exercise of veto power, over both the care of these animals and those seeking to acquire them as pets, as more of an apparent flexing of ego or as an inability to admit that others may also be capable of caring properly for these, is entirely different.
And whether this is the case in any of these instances or not, it does sound like a distinct possibility.
And regarding the fact that the health of animals in some cases has been noted above to be doubtful, one wonders if a little more attention paid to realities and the needs of the animals, so far as they can be determined in such a situation where new types may constantly appear, would be more fruitful in promoting the interests of the animals than apparently attempting in some cases to prove prospective owners unfit according to criteria which may have no deleterious consequences at all, such as the 3-month wait said to have been imposed prior to introducing fish to a new tank, or the refusal to sell a minimum school size of fish, knowing - one would think - that their health and happiness may be adversely affected by this action.
New tanks and new fish additions typically require additional water changes in proportion to the altered bioload and the ability of the tank to deal with this - what kind of ego is required to assume that nobody else is aware of or capable of dealing with such situations?
Why insist that tetras - which can, as noted above, be nippy - be kept with long-finned bettas to the exclusion of other, potentially more suitable fish, simply because a person believes they must know better than anyone else, and has been given that power of veto?
What sort of situations are those fish being kept in, under such circumstance?
One place I've recently found is staffed by fish experts who sometimes collect their own in various countries - I went there for the first time, bought some lovely fish and plants, and later looked up on the internet a fish I'd seen there, although had a hard time getting any info on care and requirements, and the people running the shop seemed to have no more info than did I.
I printed out a copy of what little useful info on requirements/care I'd found (on the 8th Google page in, I believe it was, darn scanty pickin's) and brought it to them when I went back to get some - the first thing the girl there did was to read through it - there was a very limited temp. range involved with a warning not to go over 79F.
The sort of thing (if correct) you really need to know...
She's an expert generally - I'm assuredly not.
But the info I dug up (whether accurate or not, I couldn't say) wasn't automatically and rudely rejected on that score, nor was I quizzed on my capacity to keep these or any fish.
The fish in question were H. Gulare, commonly termed 'Giant Otos' although they're really a fairly distant relation.
And while they're supposed to be fairly hardy once settled in and built up, the stress and starvation imposed by shipping generally weakens them considerably, so the poor devils spent about 7 hours being gradually adjusted to the water of their temporary home, as a lengthy process - stressful in itself - was recommended in the info I'd found.
I daresay some people would have refused my purchase of the fish because of this acclimation process on these grounds.
There's value in either argument - who's to say which would be right in the case of these particular fish?
Should somebody with no actual idea decide this because they've decided this?
There are probably those who would have refused my purchase of them on the grounds that they were not going in a bare Q tank.
Lord knows what if anything they were eating in the sales tank, as - although the bigger two especially are frighteningly uninterested in eating - they've pretty much polished off what algae there was in the established tank (DON'T like the idea of quarantining an algae eater in a bare tank- I know my otos will starve if there's no algae available, although one will eat cucumber if in extremis) I cleared the fish out to use as a Q tank for them, and so far, from what I can tell, only the two smaller ones (the two bigger being rather a worry) have even gone near any of the different veg. said to be their favorites in the info I found, and spirulina tablets don't seem to trigger any interest at all.
Had I been refused, and if these fish hadn't been homed, and if they will indeed eat only algae, (at least at this stage,) they might have starved to death quite rapidly waiting for an 'approved' customer in the clean, bare, algae-free tanks they were living in.
Not that these people would have done any such thing.
It would have been essentially an exercise in ego potentially resulting in cruelty to fish.
, i think it's good that pets @ home are doing this but its still ashame that they dont sing from the same book, our local one is not to good at giving advice but they refuse a hell of a lot of sales, we've increased our cold water sales very quickly due to pets @ home saying no to people b/c their tanks are under 3 month old, they wont give water tests so the customers have their water testing by us and then if all is ok we get the sales, i personally think they do over react too much and to be honest the shelf life of their stock is not long either even though they have cleaner tanks than they used to have.
) and I noticed the attendants were asking people loads of questions regarding their current setup - I must admit while it is a good thing in my opinion I would find their method a bit intrusive it wasn't what I would call casual and I figured any difference of opinion would mean you leaving without fish 
