WalMart Kills!

[snailstreaks]

Yep... and they look at you all strange when you tell them that they might want to pick another fish... preferably an active unfurry one.... or that those "Cool white spots" are ich.

[sunnydreamangel]

My mom went to the new walmart tonight that opened up last month down the road. She said there were more dead fish in the tanks than live ones. She was really sad and shook up cause of it. I feel so bad for those fishies:( Sunny

[SnailMomma]

Patricia,
We don't live that far apart, I am up in Ukiah!
BettaLover,
I am surprised you found "Mystery Snails" in California as Brigs and Canas are banned in California because of the rice paddies in Central California. Mystery Snails is what our pet shop called my snails too, they turned out to be Golden Canas. I have also bought blue Brigs and Jades from them. Of course, this is such a small town and the supplier is probably a customer who trades his/her extra snails for food and supplies, I can see it. I have also seen clutches of Cana eggs in the reeds where I used to go trout fishing, so the nightmares of fish and game has come through up here for them. I just can't see any of our Canas or Brigs making the 300 mile trip to Central California to get to the rice.
I offered my LFS 190 extra "mystery snails" (they were brown striped Canas Joyce had given me and I was out of room for all of them as they grew) I was given .69 per snail in store credit. That added up to over 130.00 in merchandise. She freaked me out when she called me and said they were dying right in front of her eyes and I asked her what temp. the heaters were set at. She said "heaters?" I then asked (with my heart thumping wildly) "Are you feeding them?" She said "You mean other than the algae in the tank? I then asked her how many of the yellow ones she had before I came in and bought the last three she had. She told me 25, but the rest had all died. I told her I would be right down and hung up the phone. I went over the basics with her about snail keeping, and telling her the type of snails she had were not "I live on algae alone" type snails and that they needed heat and food. She asked me to do a little basic write up for her customers, as she always assumed they knew how to take care of what they were buying.
Which brings me to Christmas Day... one of my nieces bought her sister's son a Hermit crab from one of those Mall set ups. Buying a five year old a Hermit crab was bad enough, but finding out NO-ONE on that side of the family even knew how to take care of one was even worse. Luckily, my brother in law and his wife have custody of this five year old and my sister in law will not see any animal suffer, even a Hermit Crab. I took one look at the painted shell the crab was in and I wanted to cry. Right away, just from the size of the one claw I could see, I knew the shell was too small. I told Lora, my sister in law, that I didn't know if Hermit would move into a Cana shell, but I would bring over a selection of shells that I had saved from my Brigs and Canas that had passed over and see if Hermit would move into one of them.
The next morning, I brought a baggie of ten or fifteen shells ranging in different sizes to Mom's and Lora picked out three just larger than the one Hermit was in. He grabbed one, stuck his head inside, and tossed it aside. Then he picked up shell #2. Put his head inside and BINGO! That was all he needed to know. He got out of his old shell (with some difficulty I might add) and got into a large Brig shell. Slipped it on like one would pull on an old slipper. Both Lora and I were so happy we started to cry! Hugged each other and called the rest of the family into the room to show them Hermit had picked out a new house. I then gave Lora some instructions on care of Hermit Crabs I found on the Internet. Told her to keep the other shells, and give them back as he outgrew them. And to let me know when he needed bigger ones, since he was just in a grown Brig shell, we had plenty of Cana shells in many sizes yet to go! LOL! I hate those stands where they sell Hermit crabs, but I think this is one little guy that is going to be fine.
Thanks for reading this,
Hugs,
Momma

[PaganBaby13]

On another thread, someone suggested that we, the people who know, should make up little stickers with instructions on how to care for the snails, and sneak them onto the tanks. It was suggested in jest, but now, I think it's a good idea!

you know....I really like that idea.

*Buys sticker paper* we ought to come up with a standard one to stick to all the snail tanks.

[GoliathTheSnail]

I hate that. Fortuneately my Walmart stopped selling fish.

[Kanaria]

We need to do something.

I went to my Wal Mart and the snaily tank was littered with empty shalls, and strewn-about trapdoors.

If I had the resources, I'd get a huge tank, and take all the live snails home to save them...but that's not really an option.

I don't have a clue of anything that might even remotely have an effect, but we need to gang up and take some sort of action.

It looks like cruddy aquarium care is a standard WalMart protocol...
The fish usually have some odd disease, and there are always random dead things floating or decaying on the bottom.


It makes me sick to no end...
-fumes-

[rpilla001]

Don't get too upset. My LFS does not care for snails much better.

[Kanaria]

I know. There are worse things in life, but those poor darlings never hada chance...

[Pollux]

i noticed that after a while the shops that dont care for them properly stop buying them because they loose too much money when they die all the time. it just takes time.

[Annie Anderson]

I think one of the lfs's I go to thinks snail operculums are tank substrate

[Crownlessqueen]

I'll pipe in on this subject, even though I don't actually post here too often. (lurker) I actually came in here to ask advice on how to launch a complaint campaign. And lo&behold it's already stickied

A walmart opened 2.2 kilometers from my house, (newmarket, ontario) and since it's been opened, about a year, I have just been riding my bike over there every afternoon to grab whatever we want for dinner stick it in a backpack. ( I get almost 5k on my bike, and I can shop without the kiddos double bonus!)

I've complained and complained, talked to the shift supervisors (for am, afternoon, and evening shifts) talked to the various people whom answer the bell (there is no one person in the pet area at any given time, you have to ring a bell and someone comes) called the 'customer service hotline' and called to the Canadian Walmart headquarters.

All of the tanks (24 29gals and 3 72gals) are either filthy and overstocked with sick fish, (or if you go back in 4-5 days, empty, spotless clean tanks) every fish I've ever laid eyes on in that store, has had ich. I talked to one of the girls yesterday, she said that the people on the afternoon shift have "primary care" of the fish area. So I started asking her about what they had to do and how often they did water changes, testing, and so on. She told me that they {paraphrasing}aren't allowed to use any of the testing materials or Ich meds, except for the cloudy water treatment and algae remover treatment. they 'never' do water changes except to top up for evaporation.

They don't usually have snails at all, yesterday was the first time I've ever actually seen snails there. There had to be 50 ivory and golden bridgs in ONE of the 29gal tanks. About 85% dead. I could only rescue one, because I have a 5gal tank, and I have a vivipardus in there already. I got the last one still closed up and bobbing. He/She is currently eating some leftover greenbeans we had for supper, and a calcium tab, but here are a few pics I got earlier when he realized he was out of snail hell. And one of him and my viv.




(edited to show images instead of links)

[Bottomfeeder]

It's a known fact that walmart should NOT sell anything alive. I dont even think I would trust them with machines. Good job. Did you take any Snails?

[SnailKing]

Personally, Walmart sucks when it come to raising pets for people to buy. Killer my Plecostomus and Buster my Betta did come from Walmart from Texas, they are quite healthy, I should add. besides that Walmart gets an 'F' in my book.

[nachoqtpie]

It's not only walmart that gets a bad grade, by one of my LFS, where I bought Gary, gets an F as well. This store is NOTORIOUS for being horrible. They mistreat not only their snails, but also other fish, as well as their puppies and kittens. Not to mention they overprice EVERYTHING! They will take local stray kittens, and sell them for like $100, puppies without papers, $400-$600! It's RIDICULOUS! When we went to buy Gary, I was always told that their fish section was rather good, and to never buy much anything else there other than food. Well, I just found out that we have an actual fish shop here in town. I'm going to see if they have any snails. I'm going to guess not tho... Maybe I could get a part time job there to fund my new obsession!

[SnailKing]

Wal-mart's return policy is pretty bad when you bring a sick fish back. I believe it is 72 hours unless they reduced it. I go elsewhere for my pet needs. Killer my Pleco is a big 8 inch fish now and very happy!