interfering in Wlamart fish sales

[treesprite]

I was in Walmart a few hours ago and saw/heard/eavesdropped on how a store clerk was explaining to firt-time hobbyists how to set up a tank and care for the fish. He said not a single thing about needing to have bacteria in the tank/nitrogen cycle/ammonia spikes/"new tank syndrome", and I knew the 6 fish in the bags were doomed if I didn't interfere.

 

I waited for the clerk to walk away from the people and pretended to be looking at pet things, then went to the people and started to give them the information they needed, explaining that the fish would die. At first it appeared that they were only semi-listening while hoping this stranger would shut up and go away. Then I informed them that I used to be a Petco aquatics specialist and they instantly perked up and put effort into listening, and asked me questions also. I had to explain the entire thing about "new tank syndrome", bacteria, the nitrogen cycle (in detail - ammonia, nitrite, nitrate...), what they needed to do before they put these already-bagged fish in the tank since they did not want to leave the fish at the store. The store does not sell any kind of starter bacteria.... the clerk came back over and interrupted to say to the people, holding de-chlorinator/conditioner, that all the people needed to do was put that in the water and wait two or three hours - they listened to me instead of him.... ex-Petco aquatics specialists must have some kind of authority over Walmart clerks. I suggested that the people ask the clerk for a piece of the filter media but they didn't want to do it, then the guy said he had a friend with an aquarium and would go to the friend's house for a piece of filter sponge on their way home from the store - what a relief. Unfortuneately, I could not convince the people to get a bigger tank - they had a 5 gal aquarium kit for 16 inches of goldfish, which may be too much for what bacteria they can get from someone's used filter sponge.... at least they are goldfish which are usually very tolerant of ammonia compared to tropical fish.

 

I feel bad that the clerk was offended but maybe he learned something which wil help keep some future fish from death. Mostly I'm glad I got those people to listen to me (except the tank size thing) so the fish will have more of a chance of survival. I'm very happy that Petco gave me the permanant ability to get people to follow my instructions rather than Walmart clerks who claim or imply to be authorities on the hobby just because they have a tank at home in which the fish haven't died due to human ignorance.

 

So I ask you, for the sake of saving fishes' lives was it wrong of me to intervene, contradict the incorrect information from the clerk by giving the correct information, and leaving the clerk with a hurt pride? The customers seemed to really appreciate the education, and I'm sure if the fish knew the truth they would be quite grateful for the intervention. I could not have been at peace with myself tonight if I hadn't intervened.

Edited April 12, 2009 by treesprite

[CHUBAKAH]

You asked so...

 

Goldfish have been used for years to cycle fresh water tanks because they are very resilient/hardy fish. They do not need to have a bacteria balanced tank to survive and live in fish bowls with zero filtration all over the world.

 

I'm not sure what it takes to become a "Petco aquatics specialist", but I don't think that is much above a Walmart aquatics specialist in terms of specialized training/education.

 

I'm quite sure that Walmart sells a stresscoat/water treatment solution which is all you need, so while I think you're intentions were admirable, I think your information to the Walmart customers probably adds stress to their whole "first fish tank" buying experience.

 

IMHO your time would have been better spent talking to the management of the store which would help ALL of their future "first time fish tank owners" if it is your intention to help save fish.

 

:2cents:

[zygote2k]

What's the point? They're buying 16" of goldfish for a 5 gal tank. Logic has already gone out the window. When I was the "Fish Guy" at several LFS's, the goldfish buyers were the worst when trying to educate them to the fishes needs. Let them find out the hard and costly way- you can't save all the animals of the world from stupid people.

[Coral Hind]

treesprite,

 

I think you did the right thing, or at least what I would have done if I was there. Hopefully the Walmart clerk will realize he needs to crack open a book or surf the web in order to provide some better information to the customers. Like it was mentioned earlier, goldfish are tough and can handle ammonia at levels that other fish can't but they are still not immune to it. Since goldfish are big waste producers that tank will need to have a large filter for long term success.

[L8 2 RISE]

You asked so...

 

Goldfish have been used for years to cycle fresh water tanks because they are very resilient/hardy fish. They do not need to have a bacteria balanced tank to survive and live in fish bowls with zero filtration all over the world.

 

I'm not sure what it takes to become a "Petco aquatics specialist", but I don't think that is much above a Walmart aquatics specialist in terms of specialized training/education.

 

I'm quite sure that Walmart sells a stresscoat/water treatment solution which is all you need, so while I think you're intentions were admirable, I think your information to the Walmart customers probably adds stress to their whole "first fish tank" buying experience.

 

IMHO your time would have been better spent talking to the management of the store which would help ALL of their future "first time fish tank owners" if it is your intention to help save fish.

 

:2cents:

 

+1

[treesprite]

I guess you'd have had to hear the whole conversation the clerk was having with them. The clerk was talking about fish in general not just specifically goldfish.

 

It doesn't matter what qualifications a PETCO aquatics specialist has - the people appeared to be mentally questioning whether the clerk was more accurate or whether some random customer really knew more about it, and so I decided that making the reference would sway the scale.

 

A single goldfish to cycle a tank is one thing, but all those goldfish in a little tank with no waste control is asking for a massive ammonia spike, not a minor bit of ammonia produced by a single fish. When I have a fish in the 5g qt I do a water change basically every single day.

 

I have seen bags with hundred of feeder goldfish in them - a lot arrive dead because of the ammonia that builds up from the time the fish are put in the bags and the time they arrive at the store. The amount of fish the people intended to put in that tiny tank basically is the same situation if there was not some kind of waste control in place immediately.

[GaryL]

I think you did the right thing.

 

sure, they would learn there lesson if they killed all the fish in 1 or 2 days and THEN would of asked the right questions or get some more fish and kill them also without asking the right questions. where does it stop? whether your an aquatic specialist or not, you have possibly made their aquarium experience alot more enjoyable and cost effective for them.

 

whether its salty or freshy...or puppy or kitty mills at least we can do is offer proper advice.

 

 

my .02

[dschflier]

Keep doing what your doing. If people are giving bad advice and you can give better advice, try and be nice to the worker but you should definitly help out. I think you did the right thing. Just my 2 cents

[jnguyen4007]

If the accepted mentality is to let people learn the hard way, there would not be a reason for WAMAS to exist and most people who first get into the hobby would blow lots of money with little or no success. Kudos to Forest for taking the initiative and helped point the customer in the right direction.

[TROLL]

Post title: interfering in Wlamart fish sales Never shopped at wlamart, hmmm. hehehe

 

Unfortunately, ignorance is widespread problem in pet industry and not enough education for the retailers who sells pet and products. It is prevalent especially in large department store and large pet corporation. They don't have enough resources and time to train their employees. I have seen some idiotic thing at walmart in regarding to fishes and even at LFS!

 

One time, I overhear someone saying that oscar and goldfish can co-habit in peace. He kept on about adding tropical fish like neon tetra, guppies, etc. Just wanna make me slap that person silly. He was selling to 12 years old boy, I jumped in and told him, "How can you be so stupid, oscars eat goldfish for breakfast!" He walked away and the kid end up telling his mom- she came and said thanks so much! A few minutes later, manager came down and said thanks, too. That employee must have been demoted to stock room job because I never saw him again after that. I think that was at McCrory- dead dept store now.

 

I truly think that we need to interfere sometime. Customers can be naive or uneducated, ignorance will exploit that. Jump in when you have to, it's for sake of goodness. They will be grateful that you help them.

[treesprite]

This store was in a re-middling process for several months and I kept thinking to myself that maybe they wouldn't put the fish back in, since other Walmarts stopped selling them. Unfortuneately, they did put it back. What they ought to do is hand people pamphlets about fish care anytime someone buys a fish there, especialy to beginners.

[reefmontalvo]

Yeah sometimes it's best to let others learn on there own. I could see if they were buying fish, lights and corals for a salt water aquarium. Then yeah I would kind of put in my .02 cents but also show some respect for the person working. But in this case you just demonstrated a perfect example of how to %$#* off perfect a stranger. And if you came to me with talk of Petco then Id ask why aren

[Grav]

6 goldfish in a 5 gallon tank doesnt seem that off to me, much better than 1 in a 1 gallon bowl with no filters. And we know they can survive a 100% water change with unconditioned tap water....

 

My 1st FW tank was a 10g with 6 piranha. They started off the size of a quarter, didn't move up to a bigger tank till they were 2 or 3 inches. I'd buy and feed 10 goldfish a week.

[treesprite]

Which of the following is better:

A. Let the people learn on their own while sacrificing the lives of 6 fish

B. Try to save the fish and explain to the clerk the information so he doesn't make the same mistake

 

I explained the cycling of a new tank to the clerk - I wasn't rude to him, I think I caught him off guard which made his shift less doldrum. I also informed him there there was nothing on the shelves that would be suitable to help boost new tank cycling.

 

The reason I am not at PETCO - since the question arose - is that I took the position as a "between" job until I found something in my academic field, and had customers who happened to work at the agency who referred me after learning that I had credentials for a vacant position. The only reason I came to have that discussion with them was that I did what I wish Walmart clerks would do by telling the customers not to buy any fish, which I told them both the first and the second times they came to the store. The first time I told them to come back with a water sample so I could test it - water was loaded with ammonia from the cycling that killed the first round of fish. THey wanted to buy fish then but I told them what to do to cycle the tank and not to buy fish until it was done. On the third visit I sold them some fish. I took the new job and had those same fish under my care there for many years.

 

If I had done what Walmart clerks usually do - which is to sell fish not to tell customers not to buy them as I did at PETCO - the fish at FSI would have died immediately for the second time in a row, and the agecny staff would have given up after disappointing many of the agency's clients.

 

I don't know what PETCO does now, but when I worked there they made every single new clerk regardless of dept go to a training in Virginia (store was in Gaithersburg) to a routine training which was about 50% focused on aquatics care. A good aquatics sales clerk is one who will not sell fish to a situation in which the fish are likely to die, and will direct customers to appropriate information sources if the clerk is unsure of the answer. The very least Walmart could do is give fish-purchasers an information sheet on cycling a new tank.

 

6 goldfish in a 5 gallon tank doesnt seem that off to me, much better than 1 in a 1 gallon bowl with no filters. And we know they can survive a 100% water change with unconditioned tap water....

THat thinking is what gets tangs in 20 gallon tanks. The general guideline for freshwater fish is 1" of fish per gallon (which I told the people at Walmart) - there were 16 inches of fish, which is more than 3" of fish per gallon. Just because a fish doesn't immediately die doesn't mean the fish's health and life span aren't compromised. I took in those bags of fish when working at PETCO - goldfish are not that imdestructible in the largest percentage of circumstances.

 

Edit - did I leave any other typos?

Edited April 14, 2009 by treesprite

[Mich]

I don't know what PETCO does now, but when I worked there they made every single new clerk regardless of dept go to a training in Virginia (store was in Gaithersburg) to a routine training which was about 50% focused on aquatics care. A good aquatics sales clerk is one who will not sell fish to a situation in which the fish are likely to die, and will direct customers to appropriate information sources if the clerk is unsure of the answer. The very least Walmart could do is give fish-purchasers an information sheet on cycling a new tank.

I worked at the Herndon VA store in highschool (late 90s) and the Cleveland Park DC store in college (early 2000s). At Herndon they made us go to similar training classes in Alexandria. One was aquatics, the other was companion animals. I had to pass a test for each and upon completion one would receive a little pin they could put in their sales associate shirt if they wanted to. The aquatics class was extremely basic, but adequate. It covered nitrogen cycle and went over company policies like "livestock is only covered for 15 days and there is no refund on casualties unless they come with a water sample in a seperate container".

 

At the DC store however, most of the employees did not drive and therefore were not sent out to training, they just got instructions from the other co-workers in house. In the three years I worked there I think only once did they have one of the store managers responsible for doing training come in and give 'the official class'. The benefit of which was minimal. Very often I would have to deal with horrible errors, like people bringing me back dead yellow tangs that were "killed by my oscar"!?! So, you have to realize horrible stuff can and does happen at these places and many people put very little faith in their staff, for good reason. Sometimes in my dreams I can still hear the screams...

 

If I were you I would have shown the people your WAMAS card, definitely instills more confidence in me than any length of petco tenure.

 

THat thinking is what gets tangs in 20 gallon tanks. The general guideline for freshwater fish is 1" of fish per gallon (which I told the people at Walmart) - there were 16 inches of fish, which is more than 3" of fish per gallon. Just because a fish doesn't immediately die doesn't mean the fish's health and life span aren't compromised. I took in those bags of fish when working at PETCO - goldfish are not that imdestructible in the largest percentage of circumstances.

 

+1

[Ingo]

One inch of Freshwater fish per gallon of water is accurate but goldfish have a much higher metabolism. For all goldfish the rule is 7 gallons per inch of fish. Yes, even more than salt. And I certainly don't want to offend anyone here BUT, using fish to cycle a tank is murder, even a "feeder" gold fish. A life is a life (no, I don't go to church).

It's more humane to just pee in the tank once a day for a week (and no I am not kidding), the ammonia in your urine will cycle your tank.

I feel people in stores should be taught correctly when they misinform customers.

Edited April 14, 2009 by Ingo

[reefmontalvo]

6 goldfish in a 5 gallon tank doesnt seem that off to me, much better than 1 in a 1 gallon bowl with no filters. And we know they can survive a 100% water change with unconditioned tap water....

 

My 1st FW tank was a 10g with 6 piranha. They started off the size of a quarter, didn't move up to a bigger tank till they were 2 or 3 inches. I'd buy and feed 10 goldfish a week.

 

 

My first FW tank which was many moons ago was one of those take home chinese large soup containers. I had 4 zebra tetras and like 6 neon tetras. I changed the water every 3 days. Then after a month with a full crew still intact my father bumped my up to a 2.5gallon hexagon tank. It seems from that point I earned my gills by trial and errror even with the assistance of the LFS proffessionals!

Edited April 14, 2009 by reefmontalvo