I don't know about you but I read about these cool fish online then I'm disappointed when my LFS only have basic fish. Once in a while I might get lucky but most of the time they don't have really what I'm looking for.
Someone on this forum said that Petco lets you custom order fish.
Does anyone know if petsmart also lets you do this or Petsupermarket, etc..? If so, how does it work exactly? Is there like a catalog or does the nursery they order from have a website,etc..?
I went to Petsmart and got like 2 Silver Hacket fish when they are suppose to be in groups of 6 or more. One time, they only had silver(female) red cherry barbs( that were not red!),etc..
They seem like they order such small amount of fish.
Anyone if anyone could share some knowledge either from being an employee or actually ordering a custom fish, that would be great.
My lfs has a list you can get put on and they will call you went a specific variety of fish comes in. They also will do special orders of its available. You can always ask yours what they can do. Other option is mail order
Wow, so even if you could do it, you would not do it! Yikes.
The people at Petsmart today told me that they have no ability to order fish and they receive a mystery box from the supplier and they will only find out what is in the box once they open it.
I have been trying to get some black phantom tetra and been calling around and they don't seem to have them. In fact, they had a sign that said black phantom tetra but actually whey were black skirt tetra and I purchased them by accident and within 1 hour, my red cherry barb was dead(which I have had for over 1 month) and its face look like it has been smashed. The new fish I got today were
Black skirt tetra
Orange Ron Rio flame Tetra
White finned Rosy tetra
Flyingfox
I am thinking that the black skirt tetra did it.
What do you think?
Anyway, is it true that you have no ability to order new fish backed on customer feedback or local market demand for a fish?
Just a mystery box arrived picked by whatever the supplier feels like sending that week?
Have you asked at a Petco?
The person in change or fish at my local petco will order fish to the store that petcos can carry, but not specialty fish that no petco ever carries. So if no petco ever carries.. lets say melon pleco, then he cannot order a melon pleco. But if the petco fish distribution center gets melon plecos for a petco in another state, he can get one to *this* petco (of course for wild caught fish there are only certain times of the year the fish are available in stores as there is a limited harvesting season on many species. At least that's how he described it to me.
I ordered cherry barbs (common enough and farm bred) as all they had were a few sickly females, got there while fish were still I the shipping bag and grabbed out my 1:2 m:f ratio new cherrie barbs before they hit the store's tank water.
What you might do is post what your looking for and where you live. It's quite possible that some of the people here might know A LFS that stocks what you want.
If you want something very unusual, you might have to purchase online, especially if you like in an area with only one or two stores that are big chains.
So the live stock and most hard goods were (very likely still are) on an "auto replenishment" system. We would do weekly counts and update or inventory accordingly. Once stock goes before a certain number, the distributing centers would ship out the replenishments. Higher volume stores receive higher quantities of fish.
Only fish our store was listed for would be shipped. Likewise, with hardgoods (not livestock), we could order more of a product, but could not order any product or store was not listed for. So if you wanted a fish that we were not listed for, there was no way we could order it. To that end, livestock quantities were dictated by volume of sales, as I said, so we got what we got.
However it is not a mystery what we will receive. There's always a manifest that shows what we were shipped and quantity. We did not have the ability to know if we would receive a fish that we were out of stock of, as sometimes depending on season and popularity, we would be out of one variety of fish for weeks at a time. I worked at a lie volume store. We may have gone weeks without a certain fish while nearby, higher volume stores may continue to receive them.
If we could, we probably still wouldn't as each fish needs to have a "home" or tank space to dedicate to it. Say a customer requests a certain cichlid and we had the ability to order it. It would be unlikely, given how the rest of the tanks were stocked, to provide a safe place for it on the sales floor. So if it were me, I wouldn't do it.
A few of my local lfs have a lot more room to work with in that regard, however they are limited as to when they can order as well as how much. As such, I've never successfully had an lfs order any livestock for me.
Is this due mostly to corporate culture/rules or just a unfriendly system setup?
In my case, I am looking for a black phantom Tetra.
1. If you look at the Petsmart website: Black Phantom Tetra | Live Fish | PetSmart
So they carry them all the time.
2. My local petsmart actually has a dedicated tank which said " black phantom tetra" which they have been out of stock for a while I guess and the girl had no idea if any new ones will ever come in.
I called the corporate Petsmart number and the guy was like " I don't know, maybe they are banned in your state or something" It was not exactly the response I was looking for.
Some people in this forum have said they ordered fish and picked them up right from the shipping box from Petco. I am guessing that is also a No-No at Petsmart ?
Maybe there should be a new service/website, phone app in which you can order a fish online, pay for it and pick it up on delivery date at the store.
The Petco I generally go to told me that I can order whatever fish I want and that people do, and also specify the supplier. They told me that they need the customer's phone number so they can be called when the fish came in, and strongly implied that they would sell it pretty quickly if the customer wasn't there soon after being called because they had no way to take prepayment or hold the fish. I haven't tried it yet.
In my experience, there's often at least one person in the fish department of a big box store who cares and knows something about fish. I'd find that person.
I was an aquatics guy for a bit. I did things my way for the best and managed really well.
It was normal for me to allow a customer to pay for the fish and have them come some day later to pick it up.
There are multiple list from multiple vendors that are updated about twice a week. Basically listed what was available for us and what wasn't. Some items are locked due to high death/too expensive for some stores.
This was all corporate policy and thankfully I don't work there anymore. There are POGS (plan-o-grams) which every store must follow to a T, the fish wall included. Stires are audited by corporate and if things are not where they should be, you lose points. Lose enough points and you're in hot water. Another policy was that livestock could not be placed on hold. Even if you wanted to purchase it and pick it up later. So even if the possibility existed to special order, there would be no guarantee that it wouldn't be sold before you picked it up. So again, there wouldn't be a tank to put the fish in without breaking policy, and there wouldn't be a way to make sure it wasn't sold.
Personally, as someone who had opened many hundreds of fish bags from fresh shipments, I would certainly not recommend getting them straight from the shipment box/bag even if you could. They smell awful and depending on the fish, usually at least one or several DOAs.
The fact that that store has a tag for black phantoms means they are listed to receive them, but as I mentioned, species availability and store volume would dictate how often the store receives them.
What I did on many occasions was call customers who were waiting on fish for weeks at a time a soon as we received them. Even then, I was prevented from holding them for this person. If it's on the sales floor, it was for sale.
Letting them know what fish you're interested in and giving them your number to call when they receive would be your best bet at getting the black phantoms (from a petsmart at least)
There are some fish which are rotated in and out seasonally. Sometimes we'd go years without a fish we previously stocked before we would be listed for it again. This is something nobody in store has control of, was dictated from corporate.
As a final note, I would be hesitant to trust most things big box employees tell you about water chemistry and fish keeping unless you can find a true hobbyist you can trust. 90 percent of employees don't even study the literature they're given for training, and those that do are limited to the very basic and often misinformed information that corporate doled out.
If you had come to my store while I was there, I'd have done everything to try to help you source what you were looking for, was never hesitant to recommend an lfs over us if I knew it was something we couldn't do. Corporate policies tend to leave one's hands tired. But absolutely not a single one of my co-workers would have. Most (seriously over 6 years of working) could not and would not understand the nitrogen cycle which imo is the cornerstone of aquaria, and the amount of total bs I heard co-workers say was scary and sad. Kids just looking for jobs.
I have gone to Petsmart 3 weeks in a row and in 3 weeks in a row they have been out of the black phantom even though they have black phantom listed on the aquarium.
I called today and was told " yeah, we got the black Phantoms" I race over there and black phantom aquarium was filled with black skirt Tetra(which look similar to black phantoms)
The black skirt tetra aquarium(next to the black phantom) was completely empty.
I think they don't know the difference between the two and threw in the black skirt tetra as black phantom tetras and hence may not be indicating they are out of stock of the black phantom tetras.
Always do the LFS don't buy from the big store support your local stores
All the ones around here will order stuff for me all I have to do is ask and they order it from lights to fish
I know a lot of LFS around me have gone out of business or I think specialize in Salt water aquariums. I am going to have to check to see if there are any still in business.
I bet these LFS's would have a lot less fish deaths if they simply did a methylene blue bath with each bag of fish as they come in to treat them for the likely ammonia poisoning in transit.
I agree with most of what has been said about the large chain LFSs and being unable to order what you want as far as livestock goes. I'm lucky in that there are 3 or 4 good LFSs more or less local to me, so I can usually what I'm looking for. On the other hand, I don't usually get involved with anything too exotic.
Part of what your seeing is that planted tanks, as we tend to think of them, here are very advanced systems, even if your doing a low tech tank. As large as this group is it's still kind of small compared to the people coming into the store that are content to have a typical tank of plastic plants, rocks, various "objet d'art" and clown barf gravel. This means even a good LFS has to accommodate this group if they want to stay in business.
For years I have been buying most of my equipment online. Sure, I'd rather spend it at the LFS, but it's hard. Often what I want is not in stock or not carried. It seems to be getting that way for some livestock also, but I like to see what I'm getting first.
The hobby industry is quite big here, but it is stuck in 1980's. Remember we have a weird combination of 1st and 3rd world inhabiting the same space.
There are some nice aquatic suppliers but those require a bit of driving, but considering how small the town is I'm in now, I'm happy to say that I have 2 LFS and a vet in a 4 mile radius.
You can get just about anything, but prices are insane due to the exchange rate, and that is not going to change until the communists in charge start selecting their teams on merit.
Our state president is barely literate.
I think your hypothesis is correct. They probably don't know or can't tell the difference. This could be causing inaccurate counts in their system. If this is the case, they may have lots of black phantoms recorded in their inventory if they're counting the black skirts instead which would mean they may not dip below the number needed to replenish.
Personally i'd just try to support a lfs instead, they are much more likely to know the difference and make an effort to get the fish you want.
Imho, you get to a certain point in the hobby where big box stores really have nothing you need or want anymore. They can be ideal for beginners, but run into the wrong person with the wrong info, and it can also create very bad first experiences for new hobbyists. I've witnessed this personally on many occasions.
Petco and most Local fish stores will order pretty much any fish for you. I know most petcos order from Segrest Farms, so you can go to their website for a catalog. I noticed that Segrest carries Tropica and Florida aquatic tissue cultured plants, i wonder if petco could get them in? Im still hoping for Dennerle and Aqvainnova plants, no store around me sells TC plants. My local Petco even had signs up saying they took special orders.
Our good lfs not a chain, will let you order just about anything as long as seagret farms has them, but you have to buy whatever their min order is, some fish you might have to buy 6 of others a dozen, and with some fish that can get pricey real fast, they had some awesome black corys and some skunk corys but they were 25 bucks a pop even had soem of the red lazer line corys
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