in my opinion i dont think pet shops advice you with oscars like how fast they grow ,how big they get and what you can keep with them,as i was in my local fish store today and i saw this women buying 8 oscars and they didnt even ask the size of the tank or what they have already got in the tank as i dont think anyone could keep 8 oscars do you or maybe im wrong

You are certainly not alone in the way you think. Unfortunately fish don't get the same respect as most other animals you buy. I don't think fish are alone, anyone could walk into a pet shop and buy a small snake, a lizard, a spider and I don't suppose the shopkeeper would give them a third-degree about how they are going to look after it. I think there's only so much fish store owners can do. I definitely think there should be more literature available in the store that tells people exactly what is involved in keeping large fish.

In the fish stores I frequent, there is a little sticker on the front of the tank that has a picture of the fish, where it comes from and how big it gets. You could argue that people should think about what they are buying first, but unfortunately that doesn't happen, as we are well aware here on OFL.

There are some very responsible fish store owners who I would have no qualms about buying fish from . However they can only do so much, I don't think they can be expected to interrogate every person who wants to buy an Oscar. At the end of the day, the responsibility for looking after the fish properly lies with the person who is buying it.

couple of months ago i saw a kid (10-12 year old) buying two juvenile flowerhorns. but no one in the shop asked about the fish he's got already. the kid just said he wants to buy a pair of these by just pointing at the tank, i believe he didn't even know the name of the fish. And the store owners didn't bother to advise him too.

And i recently went to buy a knifefish (from a different shop), they said i can't put knifefish with Os. but i have seen in internet they are kept together. and the guys in this site also advised me that those two types can be kept together.

I think most of the guys in stores don't have enough knowledge or experience to advise a customer. some of them don't even bother to advise at all. what we should do is as customers, we should find out about the fish we are hoping to buy, rather than relying on store owners.

I find that generally there are 2 types of people who work in fish shops. Those that love fish and work at the shops because of that. These are the people who give good advise.

The other sort of people are those that do it because it just a job, these are the ones that just sell fish and dont care

Unfortunately working in a fish shop is a poorly paid job so there are not enough people who care who work in these place

Hi,
I guess I'm very lucky with my LFS owner being a fanatic fish lover himself!
When I went to buy my first Oscar he offered the opportunity to take four or five and return the rest after a couple had established.
He takes in Oscars if they become too big...
I don't think my Oscar will ever be too big!
But the other store in town is BAD!
they don't ask questions, they just sell.
FE :they got a RTC of 25" in a 3 foot bowfront cornertank.
I get sad every time I see him.
So there is indeed a big, big difference between LFStores.

i think pet shops should only hire people who like fish not just ones who need a job for a little bit of money

i got quite lucky with thw lfs that opened here. the owner is an advid cichlid fan. and he is a breeder as well. all his stock is wild caught from lake malawi and he only sells f1 or f2 fry in his store. the only drawback is he is an african fanatic and is only now slowly increasing his new world stock.

I suppose I'm lucky we have quite a few lfs around here. In fact today I just visited a new one, that specializes in fish and reptiles. They had a gorgeous display tank with a large 18'' silver aro and some other large fish. I ended up getting a cuban cichlid

It's usually just the mom & pop stores these days that actually know what there doing. Most of the big box stores just pollute the fish keeping world with false info and bs. And don't get me started on wall-mart...

artemis1 wrote:


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