Rescue Or Repetition Of A Cruel Cycle.

[Snooks1!]

This applies to all animals really. When you see an fish at a less than well maintained pet shop/wal-mart/petco, your first instinct is sympathy for the fish....Which often leads to you buying it in hopes of recuperating it. However, is this really the right thing to do? All you're doing is showing the owners of the store than they can continue to put these fish out and people will buy them. Do you think that saving the fish is the right thing to do? Saving one fish just so many others can be treated just as poorly. Another scenario are puppies at petshops. The shops will say " We only get our dogs from reputable breeders"...This quite frankly is a load of BS. No ( intelligent and good breeder ) would ever sell their pups to a petshop.

Anyways...Your thoughts on the sympathy buy/save ?

 

[fall-apart-dave]

I would dispute that about petshops buying dogs from respected breeders. A shop near me often gets batches of puppies in, from several breeders including local farms. The pubs are always in excellent condition, with papers and the breeders frequently are there too to ask questions of. That said, I live in a very rural area and I guess its a central point for people. The breeders details are there at the shop too, along with lists of what is currently available alkong with the address to view their current stock. Maybe its different in cities?

 

[Snooks1!]

Any person can get papers on a dog. USDA offers papers for dogs, even though they have no criteria for said papers, nor do the enforce anything about it. I'm not saying all shops are like this, you'll find a few that decent, but, the vast majority of them aren't so.

Anyways.... on with the discussion.

 

[Inchworm]

Unless I really want a particular rare fish, I would not buy it if it looked sickly, but I have done so in the past. Of course, I usually have a spare tank that I can quickly set up as a hospital tank.

I don't even like to go into the puppy mill stores. The pups are always way too big. I get the impression that they might be left overs that the breeders couldn't sell for one reason or another.

 

[Heather.]

This little betta came from Pets At Home in this condition.....
They wouldnt even give me a discount after I had pointed out that he was in a terrible state..They charged me £4.99 for him... I was so mad at them...
I felt so sorry for him so I had to buy him, hoping that I could medicate him and get him better..but he died that night..

Same with this little betta.. I bought him very bloated but couldnt save him....

 

[Snooks1!]

But... does it do any good to buy these fish? It just shows the store that no matter what shape or condition the fish are in they can and will sell them. Thus setting in motion the whole ordeal again. Causing more agony and hardship on many other fishies.

 

[Heather.]

No it dosnt really do any good buying them.. But the thought of them suffering any longer made me buy them...
I have learnt my lesson though dont shop at PETS AT HOME...
I totally agree to what you are saying Snooks.. Its only encouraging them..The more people buy ill/sick fish the more they will sell them.. (or maybe not some Pet stores dont give a toss about the condition of their pets/fish)...

 

[Snooks1!]

I plan on trying to get a job at a petshop here soon, if for nothing else.... the observational aspects of just how the workings of a store go. Also, to hopefully gain some experience in keeping of several new types of exotic animals without investing mass amounts of money into them. And, with any luck... I may be able to instill more proper treatment and caring for the animals there...Even though this shop I'm going to apply for is fairly well kept, it does have some downsides.

This is just my master scheme.. It may or may not work...Let's just cross our fingers...

 

[Bignose]

But... does it do any good to buy these fish? It just shows the store that no matter what shape or condition the fish are in they can and will sell them. Thus setting in motion the whole ordeal again. Causing more agony and hardship on many other fishies.

This is exactly right. As much as it pains you, you are never rescuing an animal that is in bad shape. All you do is tell the seller that there is a market for an animal kept in those conditions. The proper thing to do is to report the seller if you can, or at the very least hope that the seller loses money on the animal and therefore doesn't repeat their actions. Buying any animal in poor shape only encourages the seller to continue their practices.

 

[cuticom]

Luckily the one really bad pet store we have, is really easy to annoy to the point they just give you an animal. One of my hobbies is breeding and showing guinea pigs and I'm just as fanatical about them as I am about fish. One local pet store kept getting one week old bubs in, they are meant to leave their mother till their 4 weeks, and it's not exactly healthy to wean them so early. So I gave the pet store a half lie about how bad it is for bubs to leave their Mum's early (okay so I exaggerated a tad LOL) and how it can easily cause problems later in life and it's illegal to sell them so young, anyways I left with two free week old bubs. I've done the same thing with fish a few times as well.

I would never pay for a rescue fish though, it just continues the cycle, but if you make them give it to you, well then it's their loss, and I've only done it with things that's theirs obviously a problem (betta with really bad columnaris, aforementioned week old bubs etc)

 

[shroob]

I wouldnt buy a fish from a shop that kept fish in poor conditions, like you said it is a cycle, the fish keep selling so the shop keeps buying more.

If no one bought from shops like these, they would soon realise that its not worth stocking the fish or improve the condition of the fish.
You may be saving one fish, but think of all the others that you will be encouraging the shop to buy.

 

[CathyGo]

I have bought at a greatly reduced price(with receipt!) or accepted free(receipt preferred) with the plan to use the fish to demonstrate how fast a fish can recuperate with the proper treatment. I recently did that with a betta from Wal-Mart. I can't get the pics to come out really good when I print them so I can't bring them in to show the manager but I can send them in an e-mail.
Here's the condition the female betta was in when I bought her.

Here's the same betta after being treated with Quick Cure for 4-5 days.

I don't rescue the fish just to save a fish but rather to give me some concrete evidence that the fish are being mis-treated. The receipt that I ask for proves that I bought the fish at that store at a reduced price because a manager realized it was sick. I bring up them giving it to me at a really reduced price as the last thing after I've already explained what is wrong with the fish and how it got that way.

I talked to both their corporate office and an assistant manager at the store about the care given to their bettas last week and kept checking to see when their new shipment of bettas came in. 4 days after they arrived at the store their water hasn't been changed or they have been really overfed. I also spotted two goldfish with slight fungal infections and 1 with a more severe one tonight. Their Assorted Mollies are VERY skinny and I don't think I've ever seen the lights above them turned on. All things that I wrote down including what tank they were in and the manager on duty that I talked to. I also got the name of the person who was supposed to go change the bettas water that night.

In short I won't just rescue a fish then disappear. I keep going till I see the results I'm looking for.

l