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On Tuesday I visited both Huntsville Petsmarts, Petco in Madison and Huntsville, and the Aquarium Shop, with a main eye towards seeing what saltwater supplies and livestock I could find. I almost posted this as an update to the previous thread about the new Petco in Madison, but since I ended up talking about other stores, I decided it better to start another thread since there seem to be quite a few new folks here lately (myself included).
At Petco in Madison most of the saltwater tanks had a brown bubbly gelatinous goo on the bottom. Is this normal?
There was one fish that may have been a flame angel (except there were no pronounced stripes on the body and the tail was dark colored) that had a spot the diameter of a pencil missing from the back center of it's tail. It was in the same tank as a few clowns.
I don't think Petco in Madison is serious about saltwater, even though they are probably in a good area to have a market. They had absolutely no sand in the saltwater section. Even if they had it, it would have been on the bottom shelf in about a 6" high space, so they would not have had enough for a tank of any size, and it would have required crawling around on the ground pulling out bags to read the bags or shelf tags. At least at Petsmart they have a few bags of several kinds and being under the tank wall, you can read the bags while standing.
Is the Petco in Decatur any better?
The Aquarium Shop did seem to have a wide variety of sand. Not sure if it was popular varieties; some of it was coarse crushed shells, but shell substrate seems to be the MO for their display tanks. I also thought their saltwater tanks were low lit, hard to see in, and enormously brown. It was hard to find the subjects for sale except red and blue legged hermit crabs. Perhaps a more experienced person would not have problems. Species photos would go a long way to solving that problem. The prices seemed high, but maybe that is just the nature of having the largest number of saltwater tanks in town. I'd be hard-pressed to drop $30 - $70 on a critter that came from a tank that looked mostly dead. I expected to see much more movement in the tanks. Be prepared to crawl on the ground if you want to see the corals. I wanted to check out the lighting they have, but the section with the bulbs was, ironically, dark. The did have a large variety of dry goods, but for me, Aquaclear filters were conspicuously absent. I'd say this store has potential, seemed to have well-intentioned employees, but needs an overhaul of their merchandising. Perhaps a candidate for the new Animal Planet show "Fish Store: Impossible".
[Off-topic: I was surprised to see today that Walmart on Hwy 20 in Madison has freshwater fish. I thought all of our local Wal-marts had gotten rid of their fish except for the occasional sad betta in a jar. They were species to appeal to a mass market (guppies, plecos, algae eaters, mollies, goldfish, tiger barbs, cories, pictus cat, etc.), looked crowded but healthy. I suppose it is hard to judge how crowded they actually are without knowing how much water and filtration is behind the scenes in the entire system.]
Finally, I'd be remiss in not mentioning that both Petcos and Petsmarts tend to have nice clean bathrooms (Aquarium Shop not evaluated). So, if you're stuck in one of these shopping plazas and want an excuse to visit a fish store, there you go. Watch your movies 2nd run at the Carmike Cinema and you can spend your savings on a fashionable Spongebob house for your tank. Take the family, and you can have all of Bikini Bottom.
At Petco in Madison most of the saltwater tanks had a brown bubbly gelatinous goo on the bottom. Is this normal?
There was one fish that may have been a flame angel (except there were no pronounced stripes on the body and the tail was dark colored) that had a spot the diameter of a pencil missing from the back center of it's tail. It was in the same tank as a few clowns.
I don't think Petco in Madison is serious about saltwater, even though they are probably in a good area to have a market. They had absolutely no sand in the saltwater section. Even if they had it, it would have been on the bottom shelf in about a 6" high space, so they would not have had enough for a tank of any size, and it would have required crawling around on the ground pulling out bags to read the bags or shelf tags. At least at Petsmart they have a few bags of several kinds and being under the tank wall, you can read the bags while standing.
Is the Petco in Decatur any better?
The Aquarium Shop did seem to have a wide variety of sand. Not sure if it was popular varieties; some of it was coarse crushed shells, but shell substrate seems to be the MO for their display tanks. I also thought their saltwater tanks were low lit, hard to see in, and enormously brown. It was hard to find the subjects for sale except red and blue legged hermit crabs. Perhaps a more experienced person would not have problems. Species photos would go a long way to solving that problem. The prices seemed high, but maybe that is just the nature of having the largest number of saltwater tanks in town. I'd be hard-pressed to drop $30 - $70 on a critter that came from a tank that looked mostly dead. I expected to see much more movement in the tanks. Be prepared to crawl on the ground if you want to see the corals. I wanted to check out the lighting they have, but the section with the bulbs was, ironically, dark. The did have a large variety of dry goods, but for me, Aquaclear filters were conspicuously absent. I'd say this store has potential, seemed to have well-intentioned employees, but needs an overhaul of their merchandising. Perhaps a candidate for the new Animal Planet show "Fish Store: Impossible".
[Off-topic: I was surprised to see today that Walmart on Hwy 20 in Madison has freshwater fish. I thought all of our local Wal-marts had gotten rid of their fish except for the occasional sad betta in a jar. They were species to appeal to a mass market (guppies, plecos, algae eaters, mollies, goldfish, tiger barbs, cories, pictus cat, etc.), looked crowded but healthy. I suppose it is hard to judge how crowded they actually are without knowing how much water and filtration is behind the scenes in the entire system.]
Finally, I'd be remiss in not mentioning that both Petcos and Petsmarts tend to have nice clean bathrooms (Aquarium Shop not evaluated). So, if you're stuck in one of these shopping plazas and want an excuse to visit a fish store, there you go. Watch your movies 2nd run at the Carmike Cinema and you can spend your savings on a fashionable Spongebob house for your tank. Take the family, and you can have all of Bikini Bottom.
). 
