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Petco Now Selling "Baby" Bettas

11K views 45 replies 25 participants last post by  wendyjo 
#1 · (Edited)
Today I had the misfortune of seeing another sad animal rights case involving Bettas: Petco is now(?) selling "Baby" Bettas. The fish are about the third the size of your pinky, kept in the same containers as the other Bettas (i.e a tupperware container with a lid) and being sold for $1.99.

This made me so sad. I was seconds away from buying one of them because it looked tattered and hungry and probably wouldn't survive very long. But I had to remind myself that buying one of them only means the Pet industries get the money and will replace it with others. It's a crappy choice to make, I really wanted to buy the fish anyway and throw it in one of my shrimp tanks. I know they eat shrimp, but he was so tiny he couldn't eat a newly hatched one-- which makes me wonder what they were feeding him, if anything at all.

I guess this just really stuck with me today. It's one thing to sell Bettas in squalid conditions to people without even telling them how to care for them, but to add the gimmick of a "baby" fish is another level of cruelty because it preys on our psychological need to take care of things weaker than ourselves.

Well it made me pretty pissed.
 
#37 ·
One of the chains by me (not Petco) installed a barracks system for their bettas and that is the only time I have ever complained about inhumane conditions. The barracks were much smaller than the cups - a large male couldn't even turn around in them. They were awful and had alot more dead fish than any cup rack I've ever seen. I complained to the department manager, the store manager and then went home and complained to HQ. They did finally stop using it - I have to imagine others complained as well. I got really loud in that store with the store manager - I was really pissed about it.
 
#38 ·
They made a barracks system with tanks smaller than the cups? Are you kidding? If it had a lot of dead fish, they were doing it wrong.
Did it have a sump, with water flow and a heater? Or was it just a bunch of small stagnant tanks conjoined?
 
#40 ·
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I don't know exactly how it was set up. I do know that some of the fish were unlucky enough to be in a cube of the system that had the outflow in it, and they were literally pinned up against the side from the force. The barracks were in a single line along the back wall directly above all above the other, larger tanks so it's possible they all ran on the same system. I'd guesstimate that each cube in the barracks was about 3.5" square - not even sure about that as it was hard to tell the depth of them. But they looked like they were in little picture frames and the big guys couldn't move around at all. It made the cups look like mansions. I was totally horrified and had a fit right there in the store, and I never do stuff like that. Told the store manager he should be ashamed of himself, that those were living creatures not toys for display, that I wouldn't be spending another cent at his store and that I'd be contacting HQ about it.
 
#42 ·
Maybe they were smaller than what I stated then - I wasn't able to measure them at the time of course. I am certain that they had considerably less room in the barracks. Some of the males were literally filling up the entire space from nose to tail. Maybe it was the container shape as well, in a round cup it seems that the fish can, well, swim around a bit but they just couldm't do anything in these cubes. And to be sharing the water with all the dead neighboring fish didn't seem too great either, filtered or not. None of them looked healthy - they were dead or had rot and well they all seemed lethargic simply cause they couldn't move. It was like a fish ghetto.
 
#43 ·
That's disappointing, I don't know why they would build them that small. It's a good system when setup correctly.
 
#44 ·
I know a smallish pet store that keeps its bettas one female per sale tank of others things like tetras, and each male has his own .5 gallon tank. I know that's still small, but the little tanks have a good-sized wad of java moss in each one, and their bettas are the brightest I've ever seen for sale.
My local Petco is selling those babies, but all of them look well-fed, and there are little care pamphlets right next to them. The adult bettas also have good, clean water, and although they usually have at least 40 bettas, I never see more than one that looks sick. They also sell smallish adults instead of big ones, which give them more space.
 
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