i have not been in the fish hobby very long. i'm a reptile guy who was looking to try something different. unlike reptiles however, where there are monthly shows, numerous shipping options, and always people looking to unload stuff, fish purchasing is primarily done at stores. over the last year or so i have been just about all over pennsylvania stopping at just about every fish store along the way. the purpose of this blog is to rate where i've been and what i've seen.
my criteria is somewhat esoteric and self-serving, based on my experiences and on my interests. my interests, as you'll surely recognize, are cichlids and predatory fish. here is a breakdown of how my criteria work:
selection: this is a rating of the stores diversity of cichlids and predatory fish with no attention paid to any other sort of livestock or supplies. bonus points are given for having uncommon species and for having a dedicated "aggressive fish" section. deductions are made for stores that label themselves as "aquarium stores" and have a poor selection. something else that annoys me, though it seems omnipresent, is the concept of "assorted africn cichlids." i realize that there are many species, but they are each unique in their own way and deserve to be treated as such. could you imagine going into a pet store that had one price placed on a cage marked "assorted puppies"?
health: this category might as well be called "luck," as it is based solely on the survival rate of fish i purchase from a given place. it could be based on the health of the fish, or maybe even countless other factors. but if i buy 5 fish from 'store a' and 5 fish from 'store b,' place them under identical conditions and the 5 from 'store b' are floating the next morning, then logic dictates something was wrong there.
staff: this is based on the helpfulness, availability and knowledge of the staff. it's not often that i ask the staff a question, and if i do i'm fine if they don't know. but it irks me when they just try to make something up. it also bothers me when they make the assumption that i don't know what i'm doing. if i'm buying two fish that can't live together then they won't live together. i do have more than one tank. another thing that bothers me is when i, the customer, have to seek out someone to assist me. but the flip side of that is that i don't like being 'helped' before i even get a chance to look around.
price: the bottom line of things, really. this can be an expensive hobby, and having been all around i know about what things cost. also, my background in having owned a pet store gives me a little additional insight into what kind of markups are placed on the fish.
all facets are rated on a scale of 0-10, though there are instances where i did not purchase anything from a given store and thusly could not rate the health of the fish.
a bit about me....as should be obvious, i live in pennsylvania and make a great effort to not stray from its borders if i don't need to. i used to own a pet store that specialized in reptiles. i still keep a number of reptiles as well, though i have scaled that back significantly for right now. i make a living by being employed. i currently have 12 tanks running with everything from gouramis and danios to piranhas and cichlids. most of my fish knowledge has come from a combination of reading online and real books (yes, they still make them) and a whole lot of trial and error. something else that may bother some readers, i absolutely never use upper-case letters. you'll get used to it.
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