Petland Discus, absolutely disgusting....

[Stag]

You think they would discount the ones missing a fin?

But serisouly, that is sad. They make us looks like "golden gods of fishkeeping"!

[jlcoop277]

I posted a simalar thread on my local forum. The ones at my LFS were all black and chunks missing from their fins. Sad thing is they normally take special care of their discus.

[ericatdallas]

Whenever I see fish like that I always talk to the manager about it.

I've seen plenty of them like that and believe it or not people buy them.

Im surprised those fish are even alive .

I'm having a hard time believing people buy it. I've seen some unhealthy stunted discus selling for 2-3x that amount, but they at least had all their color so I can see why people would get tricked into buying it.

From an inexperienced perspective, the only thing I could see is if the store convinced them that with care they'll grow out (i.e. they're lied to). Or, the people who buy them are the same type of people that buy certain brands for 10x as much just because of the name/status associated with it. Maybe the sick puppy sympathy buy (i.e. "I'll nurse it back to health") syndrome.

[rdiscus]

OMG ... they called that's Discus?

[DiscusOnly]

People are going to buy what they think discus should look like. If they haven't seen what healthy discus are supposed to look like they will listen to whatever the LFS person tell them. I kept this video that was sent to me by someone who was interested in getting discus from me last year. They were told by a LFS that an RO unit is a must for discus keeping. I told them to return the RO unit but they were somehow convinced by the store that I am giving them wrong info. They ended up keeping the unit. Instead of selling them 2 months old discus, I gave them a few "culled" to put in straight tap water to prove to them that it will be fine.

They reported back with this video but to my surprised, they also decided to pay good $ for the other more colorful discus in the video. The sad part was that they were very happy with the more colorful discus but asked me for help in getting the discus to eat something else beside live black worm.

[Skip]

Expensive feeder fish

[Discus PB]

I use to work at a vet clinic in Omaha, Nebraska. We use to do the vet work for the animals for Petland. By far they are one of the worst places to buy any animal from. We weren't even allowed to wear are scrubs or anything with the vet clinics name on it to that store if we dared venture in it. Then they got fed up at the vet clinic and told them we had enough and find someone new to do their puppy check ups. I would say for every 20 puppy's that came in 2 were in good health right away. the other 18 were either put down or had parvo. At one point it was so bad our QT room was overflowing with puppy's and kitten's we had to set up another room for QT. That was around the holidays when that all went down.
The worse was when people bought puppy's they would get a free check up after they bought or got a payment plan. I would guess 45% to 50% of the dogs were sick and most likely they had to be put down in a year.
FYI read the fine print in the contract you sign buying a pet from them or better yet don't ever by anything from that place.
Oh can't forget $200 "Barn Cats" are just free or $10 kittens they bought from the paper or Craigs List to resell.

[ericatdallas]

We way overpaid for our dog at Petland...

She was in a pretty sad state when we got her too...

[wendy9722]

We way overpaid for our dog at Petland...

She was in a pretty sad state when we got her too...

A really good friend of mine her hubby bought 2 puppies in there before and they had more health issues than what a mutt would have. She had spend thousands on vet bills with them. I told her she was nuts.

[judy]

Petland is Canada is stopping the sale of puppies because they say they can't compete with the online sites selling dogs. I find myself wondering if its more likely the fact that there has been a lot of rumbling about them getting their puppies from puppy mills, and we Canadians do not take kindly to those awful places.

[ericatdallas]

We were nuts for how much we paid for our dog.

The local/region pet store here, Jack's stopped selling puppies. They're doing adoptions from local shelters like most major chains are doing now. The employees said it was due to not wanting to sell dogs that could be mistreated or from puppy mills any more.

[round flat fish]

Those are bad, but unfortunately i have seen worse. I personally use to manage the fish room at a petland. The sad part is management would not care if this was reported. The franchise as a whole was more worried about puppy milling than the condition of the fish in their stores. Also i feel that bashing a franchise for the care that a specific store gives their fish is a bit extreme. Petlands are not a chain like petco and petsmart. They are individually owned.

[judy]

They're actually franchises, and the stores all have to be consistent visually, with their stock, and with the hard goods they sell. Inventory is controlled from head office and the warehouses that serve all the Petlands in any given city.

[round flat fish]

FYI the most i ever seen the petland i worked for spend on a dog was $500 for a bulldog that sold for $2600. Other than that the average dog costs them between $50-200 from the Hunt corp. (#1 in puppy milling). The conditions are horrible and i quit working there because of it. I did not ever sell a dog as i was the fish guy but cringed everytime i heard the "this puppy is not from a puppy mill" line.

[Discus PB]

Petland was selling prairie dogs for a $150 a pop. They banned selling them here cause you can catch something from them. So they had what was left of their inventory put down. The fish section was a joke to say the least. Nasty looking fish and way over priced.
I hate the puppy mill thing but I also hate you can get a dog or cat on payment plans like a car. I seen some high priced dogs in there $2,000 for a Scottie dog.
Either way individually owned or a franchise they should be shut down.
Is Hunt corp the big puppy mill out of Kansas? I know there was a big one down thee a while ago.