The ideal petstore/LFS...

[Purplesmurf]

What would it look like, what animals / fish would be in stock, what would the tank setup be like, what would the floor plan be like, etc.?

I know it's silly, but I'm begining to plan and research what a really, really good petshop would be like. So post what you think would make for a great experience and what pet peves you have about most LFS's.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Hi there and welcome to fishforums.net ,
What makes a good lfs more than anything else is the knolege and advice from its staff on fish and what they ask you before selling the fish(if anything), but there are other things to take into consideration as well;

a. How do they stock their tanks? Many lfs's will overstock their tank because the fish don't stay there long before being sold and lfs's have massive filtration systems, but even so if they have a 10gallon tank with 40-50 platys in it, this is way too much even for a lfs tank. Also what fish they mix in their tanks is important- neon tetras and a male betta or tiger barbs and guppys for example is bad stocking because in a tank setup where the fish had time to establish social pecking orders, the neons would harrass and tear the bettas fins off and the tiger barbs would rip the guppys to shreds.

b. Knolege of staff; ask them questions like how do you set up a tank? if they just tell you to dump 8 guppys in a brand new tank, this is very bad advice, but if they explain to how about properly cycling a tank and how to do a cycle with fish and a fishless cycle this is good.
Do they ask you any questions before selling you fish like what is the situation with your current tank set up? Many lfs's will sell fish that are completely unsuited to peoples tanks because it makes them money, but this is very irresponsable behavior. The biggest crime tends to be selling common or sailfin plecs or similar large growing fish to people with 10-20gallon tanks or smaller, these fish can reach anything between 10 and 20inchs and common plecs need at least a 50gallon while sailfins need a 125gallon to grow up in. The same is true if they sell you fish when your current ones are dying of desease, or knowingly sell you a med that will not cure your fish or knolingly sell you a fish that is not compatible with your current ones.

c. How healthy are their tanks? In almost every lfs, you are bound to see at least 1 dead fish as the stress these fish go through via transportation to the lfs will inevitably kill one or 2 or them, but more than 2 dead fish is a sign or neglectance, especially if there are staff around that should have noticed and dealt with the dead fish.
The same is true if they have fish deseases rampant in their tanks and are selling fish from the same deseased tanks and/or are not closing infected tanks off with fish in them from sale or don't have a hospital tank to put sick fish in that is being used properly.
Dirty gravel/sand with excess food or waste or water that is not crystal clear in it is also a bad sign the store is not maintaining the tank properly.

In a good lfs, i would like to see staff that know how to start up a new tank properly and will ask questions on your current tank setup and sell the right fish for you acordingly, in a good lfs i would expect to see 2 or less dead fish at least and the tanks not to be rampant with desease- good stocking with mixing the right fish types is also important.
If i was sold a bumblebee goby for example, i would expect them to tell me it needs a brackish tank setup and many will only eat live or frozen foods, I would expect them to give me an acurate description of how large it grows and what its temperment is like with other fish or good fish to mix with it.

d. Good merchandise is also important- i would expect to see the most commanly known fish meds being sold there(depending on the country as not all meds are available in all countrys), Melafix, aquarium salt, the Interpet or Jungle med range and Maracyn 1&2 for example i would expect to see at any decent lfs. I would also expect to see a variety of brands of water testing kits available which i could test my water with for ammonia, nitrates, nitrites and ph/kh/gh.
I would expect to see a good selection of imformative up to date books on fish keeping and a good range of tanks ranging up to at least 40gallons and the ability to order particular fish or tanks for you.

Lastly but not leastly, i would expect in many good lfs's to take back fish they have sold you in the past at any time as long as you had a receipt for the fish and it is healthy or to take young livebearers or their fry in as for many people, livebearers produce more fry than what they can cope with.

 

[Purplesmurf]

So far my plan is this:

It'd be a split store, one half for fish, one half for pets like dogs, cats, and birds. But we won't be selling any large animals; if you want a dog or a cat we'll have a catalouge of all the animlas being offered by local rescues and the few that we can foster in the store during the day for a few hours or contact information for reputable breeders. For the bird people, again, we would not keep any animals in the store save for two or the that would be our pets. To buy one we would put you incontact with a breeder with whom we would have a deal worked out and who's faciluties and animals we would have checked. I would also like to try and affiliate, or at least have an avian vet the store would use.

(To make a profit on rescue or breed animals, the store would do one of two things: for animals purchaed from a breeder we will extend the customer credit for vetrinary check-up from the vet we have affiliated with (around $50) for each large cage purchased ($60+). The money from this method comes from purchasing of cage accessories -- perches, toys, and food dishes all add up.

Animals who are adopted through us should make up the majority. They will cost more in-store, but less over all. Addoption fee + medical fee + leash + several toys + kennel + by bed. All adopted pets will be given with a typed up overview of general behavior, commands known, and how well it handles on a leash.)

Smaller animals like gerbils and mice, salamanders, and newts would be kept in store but would not be avaliable for sale in bulk -- ie. not as feeders. The same will run true for goldfish and minnows except for the animals that would be bred in-store with the intent of selling them as food.

The fish half of the store would be kept dimly lit (natural light through a white screen and aquarium/pond lighting only). All tanks will be moderatly planted, species only in most cases, and will contain no rocks (nothing to really block nets) and most will be chained together to make water maintainance easier -- tanks containing similar animals will will share water flow,e.g. Tank 1 (Male Guppies) -> Tank 2 (Female Guppies) -> Tank 3 (Platies) -> Tank 4 (Swordtails) -> UV Steralizer -> 200 gallon fuge (CO2, RO unit when needed, plants, crabs, snails, a few amanos, 600w PC lighting on a schedule reverse of the tanks, and heaters) -> Tank 1. Filtration won't be done by anything used by hobbists, I'll be either be purchasing several comercial filtration systems from a company similar to MarineLand or use large pond filters with a minimum GPH of 3500gph. Each string of tanks will have it's own comercial/pond filter as well as smaller biowheels on Tank 2 and 3 and heaters on Tanks 1 and 4. All tanks will have a small power head attached to RUGF to help minimize the need for gravle vaccing. With a circulation rate of about 14.25 times an hour (4 x 20gal + 200fuge / 4000) I should be able to keep higher densities of schooling/peaceful fish with few ramifications in regards to their health (maybe 30-40 2in. fish per tank).

All tanks with fish will be under 2-3wpg, tanks with livebearers will be kept at 2wpg and will grow "easy" or fry friendly plants (java moss,amazon swords, water sprite, anachris, water cabbage, etc.). The rest of the stocked tank will be kept at 3wpg and 30ppm CO2. The plant only tanks (there will be 3 of them, 55 gallons each) will be kept under 4wpg, 35ppm CO2. All tanks will be dosed with micro-nutrients and kept under moonlighting at night. This will let me grow and sell the widest variety of plants possible.

Bettas will not be sold in cups. Nor will they all simply be lyretails. I will have a betta barracks setup just next to the display tank alcove and a duplicate system in the back. Each betta will have 2 gallons of "personal" space and there will be around 50-60 bettas on diplay at a time. I plant to buy several show quality bettas (a pair of CT, SD and standard Delta, and LT) and breed them about a year before the store will open. The goal will be to have 20 bettas of each style on display at any point in time.

I will not sell any tanks smaller than 1 gallon for any reason, and people who think bettas can live in fish bowls will be several rebuked. The smallest tank avaliable for children to buy will be 5 gallons simply because they have filters and heaters. 1 gallons will be avaliable solely to betta enthusiats and breeders, or to keepers I feel are competant, but not to Mr. Johnson and his two year old son.

In the middle of the store I'm going to have a circular pond (2' deep. 8' diameter) depression excavated from the foundation. It will be built up 3' from the floor and have a bench running around it. Only 5' of the diameter will be "pond", the outer foot will be a bog garden (lillies, cat tails, ornamental grasses). The pond will beheavily planted (duck weed, water lettuce, two lily pads, several strands of hornwort kept submerged and some java moss tied to drift woo) and stocked with three rainbow trout, four bluegill, and three shubunkin.

When purchasing fish I'll be taking a page from Big Al's and ricester. A small computer will be kept by the diaplay tanks. Each customer will have to make an account and give basic personal details -- name, phone number, number of tanks, tank sizes, current tank stocking, years in the hobby -- before they can move to the next stage of selecting which fish. Each fish will have a profile in the computer (water parameters, food requirements, typical water column location, life span, price etc.), and you will have to view it before being able to purchase an animal. All purchases will be kept in the database as well as any returns, so I'll be able to keep track of whose competant and who not. I'll also be able to help people make better decisions if I know exactly what they're trying to shop for.

Sound good? I'm still working on details. I plan to have every detail drawn out by the end of college, from the floor plan, down to the plumbing of tanks, to light switch placement.

Money will be little of an object. I'm opening either a mutual fund or IRA as soon as I start college. I'll be depositing $5000 initially and then $4000 each year afterward. My girlfriend (future wife and co-owner most likely ) will be doing the same and after college when we're sure we're together for the long run we'll be combining our funds and yearly deposits. The petstore will not come into being for probably another fifteen or twenty years so our invesments will have time to mature and so we'll have time for careers and possibly have children, but about that time we'll have upwards of $500,000 of our own funds plus whatever loans we can secure to invest in opening a business. Hopefully this board will still be around then

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

It sounds like it is going to be a great store(do you live in the US or UK or elsewhere?), but you need to make yourself stand out from the rest as there is only so much you can do with the layout of the tanks.
The most important thing is to train your staff properly and make sure they know at least a little about what fish you are selling, how to indentify the basic common fish deseases and how to do a fishless cycle in setting up a new tank(cycling with fish is no longer widely accepted as the best methos of setting up a tank, but since so many people dump fish in brand new tanks it would probably be a good idea to educate your staff on how to advise people in getting through cycling a tank in such a situation).

Reputation is everything in being a succefull fish store, and the thing that can damage your reputation the most is under educated staff, you will most likely end up with lots of students at uni or colege working at your store for a bit of extra cash with no knolege on fish, so your best bet probably would be to publish a leaflet the staff can carry around with them so that if they ever need to quickly look somthing up, they have somthing at hand which could save their imbarrassment and your reputation as a good lfs.
Many large chain fish stores like Walmart or petsmart don't train their staff half as much as they could so this will be your edge over them, as without well trained staff your don't have anything much that makes you stand out from them.

I would personally leave the large animals like dogs or cats or lizards and the like as you are much better to specialise is fish as people won't realy see you as a lfs otherwise and will avoid you for serious fish buying.
My lfs sells small animals like hamsters, rats, mice gerbils and recently, rabbits. These make a good income but should only be used as a back up when fish sales aern't doing so good, you should try to have at least half the store dedicated to fish, the other quarter to other small animals and the other quarter to fish and animal merchandise. Selling things like dog and cat foods and other gear is also a good income as the chances are, most people in your town will have a dog or cat but won't want another but still need things to look after them.

Display tanks are also a good idea to get people inspired to keep fish- nothings looks better than a large heavily planted 50gallon with a variety or well suited more unusual fish which are not livebearers for the adult customers to inspire them to spend money on expensive fish and planting- a childrens display tank with well organised colorful gravel and decor and fake plants with some common hardy fish like danios, platys, white clouds and females bettas or other similar hardy fish would be good to get children involved in the hobby as children make money when they beg their parents to get fish. Be careful though with "fake" tank setups with all the colorful gravel and stuff as they can often look tacky if not done with care.

Selling fish species that are harder to get hold of is a very good idea, i like your idea of selling the more unusual betta species as there are far too many VT(veiltail) bettas around for their own good and they do not sell well. Selling wild betta types is also good like enisae's, pugnax, smaragdina, macrostoma and other types are very good as they are hard to come by and will make your store more appealing to the more serious and experienced fish keepers.
None the less a good selection of livebearers is good, short tailed less colorful breeds of guppys have better imune sytems and are much more hardy because they are so much less inbred than the newer strains of guppys coming out, but a good selection of delta tailed, ribbon/long tailed and swordtailed guppys never goes amiss and they do look stunning even if being about as hardy as neon tetras. The same goes for other livebearers like swordtails, mollys and platys.
Too many lfs's sell far too many goldfish, so getting other types of coldwater fish apart from koi karp will incourage people to to stay with their coldwater tanks and not get bored of them, it was also incourage more experienced fish keepers to keep coldwater fish as many see goldfish as boring uninteresting beginner fish.

If you can, try to get as many small growing L number plecs as you can and not to sell too many common and sailfin plecs as L numbers have always been in demand for both newb and experienced fish keeper alike. Getting a good range of breeds of corys other than just peppered, albino/bronze corys will be good and nothing beats a good batch of khuli loachs, of which there are quite a few types.
Whatever other popualy sold fish you get like cichlids, try to get as rare a types and interestingly colored as you can. Keep the livebearers, danios and tetras as cheap easy to sell fish, but make sure you always have somthing that other lfs's aern't selling to make you stand out .

 

[Snailguy101]

Are you making a actual store If you are it sounds great!

 

[Purplesmurf]

That's the idea

Thanks for the input Tokis, I hadn't even thought about some of that stuff, especially the L-No plecs.

I live in Colorado, but I don't know where the store will end up being located. Denver maybe, there's a horrendous shortage of good stores around here.

The store will be primarily fish, and I plan to personally work 50-60 hours a week, but my girlfriend is a dog nut so I'm sort of meeting her half way. It was actually her idea not to sell dogs but to organize with the local dog and cat rescues and avian breeders. Except on the weekends, when rescues would be invited to come stake the store out, there would be no "large" animals present. Fish/salamanders/crabs/shrimp only except for our personal pets.

In order to divide the store both mentally and physically I had planned to make the fish section much, much darker than the other half of the store. Black carpet for the floor around the shelves and register with a white linoleium or tile where the display tanks will be and to divide the sections physically, have either a door or small "hallway" leading over to the general pet side.

The staff will actually be picked by being given a small book that will run over all the "basics" of aquaculture -- the nitrate cycle, why overstocking bad, identification of ich, dropsy, velvet, HOTH, internal and external parasites, swim bladder problems, basic cures/treatment of all the listed diseases, why the gallon-to-inch is generally incorrect, how to install and maintain filters, the plant respiration cycle, how clean glass (I won't have any acrylic tanks, I just know I'd end up gouging them all) and basic water chemistry, and why we won't sell pacu, tinfoil barbs, red tail catfish at all, or why comet goldfish / koi, common plecos, clown loaches, and most cichlids are a bad idea for anything under 100/55gal respectivly.

Just realized I hadn't pointed out that this will be a freshwater only. At least for now as I wouldn't feel comforatable selling something until I'd had several years experience with it personally.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I agree, marine tanks are much more difficult to setup than freshwater ones and take longer to cycle in many respects, marine are way more sensitive to water quality and salt concentration levels and die alot more if not looked after correctly in every single respect, i wouldn't advise you do marine as you say if you havn't had at least 2yrs experience with keeping marine tanks. Also if you do marine tanks at some point in the future, try to start up your own large 100gallon marine tank and a small 20gallon one(forgotten the name for small marine tanks), the smaller the tank the harder it is to maintain the enviroment properly so doing a small scale marine tank will give you more experience than simply doing large ones.
If you do decide to do marine tanks at some point in the future, although i myself have no experince in keeping one i have done a fair amount of research on them it i would personally advice you try to grow live rock to sell at first rather than the fish themselves to begin with.

Heres a realy good site listing practically all the catfish known and has thousands of L number plecs listed with info about them in their cat-elog ;

http/www.planetcatfish.com/core/index.php

This site also has many of the rarer guppy species listed;

http/www.guppies.com/PAGES/photos.html

 

[Seahorse]

Why wouldn't you do marine tanks?

If it isn't for 15-20 years, surely you have plenty of time to get acquainted

 

[sylvia]

If you are realy planning to do this, be aware it's going to cost you a fortune as you seem to be looking to do everything 'perfectly' (I don't know how else to say it) and not saving on anything. BTW, I think there's a law that doesn't allow pet stores to breed their own stock. It may only apply to big chains but you should look up the laws in your state because you'd be surprised as to what you can and cannot do...
And just cause it's bothering me ... The common betta variety is a 'veiltail'.
Sounds like it could be a great shop. Now if only I lived nearer...

 

[Purplesmurf]

Partly because of the work involved, but most because of the way I learn.

I have to focus on one thing or I lose my grip. I know a little about a lot, and aquaria is the first thing I'm really have success in getting to stick. For now I'd rather stick with something I really know quite well and maybe branch out later if I feel confident enough.

 

[Purplesmurf]

If you are realy planning to do this, be aware it's going to cost you a fortune as you seem to be looking to do everything 'perfectly' (I don't know how else to say it) and not saving on anything. BTW, I think there's a law that doesn't allow pet stores to breed their own stock. It may only apply to big chains but you should look up the laws in your state because you'd be surprised as to what you can and cannot do...
And just cause it's bothering me ... The common betta variety is a 'veiltail'.
Sounds like it could be a great shop. Now if only I lived nearer...

Then I'll breed them privatly at home and sell them through my busniess.

I actually plan to do a lot of DIY work. The CO2 systems, the betta barracks, drilling all the tanks, plumbing the fuges, etc. The things that I cannot avoid doing myself (like the filters) or that will yield better results for a little more cash will be bought and paid for. Frugaility is nice, but open wallets have uses too. The only "perfect" thing I am looking for is quality and care of my stock, that just requires I do a lot of other things well.

As for the betta types, I know the common ones: viel, delta, super delta, double, half moon, plakkt, and crown. And I hope to carry specimens of the delta/super, halfmoon, and crowns. They're such beautiful fish.


Sorry for the double post.

 

[Seahorse]

While selling more "show quality" bettas is a good idea in theory, consider this...

Do you really want to sell a show quality Halfmoon to a beginner?

I think it is a good idea that VT's are the most common. I don't want the market saturated with the other tail types, making those equally as common, nor would I want to sell show quality fish to people who don't care and plan on putting it in a goldfish bowl anyway.

I just couldn't do that with fish I bred and put love into



Also I am sure plenty of fish store owners started out very gungho about this, but day in and day out after several years, they do lose a little of that gusto. I have had plenty of fish store owners tell me it is okay to put a few angelfish in a 10 gallon, and none of them ever warned me that they would grow out that tank in a snap. So while I admire your enthusiasm, you should be quite realistic.

Lastely, is it legal to deny customers a sale? Let's say they want to put a very large (~12 inch fish) into a 10 gallon. Can you legally deny them the sale? If so, neat

 

[sylvia]

I only mentioned the betta thing because you apparently said 'lyretail' by mistake before

If that law realy does exist like I remember it, you can't breed them at home and sell them through your FS as that's the same as the FS privately breeding and selling them. I suppose you need not worry about it right now. Just remmber when it comes to actualy doing this to look up the laws.

Good luck anyway! I hope you manage to do this.

 

[Purplesmurf]

Denial of service is protected by law and a key part of free trade. For the same reasons you can be thrown out of a resuraunt I can tell you I won't sell you fish.

 

[Seahorse]

Very awesome, and I will keep that in mind.