It is with great sadness that I report the passing of the three guppies whose pictures appeared here last week. They will be remembered fondly for the fun peek-a-boo games they brought to the aquarium, and for the short time they were with us, they brought much joy.
I felt like a terrible fish-mom.
I think the ferry ride was too much for them. Either that, or people should never buy fish from Petco. I will say that their customer service is terrible. When we were off-island on Saturday for Shaun's swim meet, I took the poor pitiful corpses back to the store to get a refund and some more fish, taking along a water sample from the tank, as per their 15-day money-back freshwater fish guarantee. They did give me the refund, after I told them about it (the twinkie working the fish section apparently didn't know about it- actually, I'm not sure she knew much of anything). Despite the fact that the tests didn't show anything wrong with the water, she refused to sell me any more fish! She said (and I quote) "I can't in good conscience let you have more fish, when you've already killed three." I just stood there for a minute, looking at her, then I turned around and left before I said something I would have regretted.
Now I remember why we stopped buying dog food from that particular Petco.
We went across the parking lot to Sprawl-Mart (ugh) and got five Glowlight Tetras (they didn't have guppies). Two days later, I am happy to report that they are still swimming, even though they had to endure a longer ferry ride than the guppies did, in colder weather. I am feeling cautiously optimistic about their survival.
5 comments:
That's just so sad. :(
RIP little guppies. How did Emma take it?
Crushed as she probably was, I bet Emma perked right up when she saw those neon tetras. Here's to a long life for them :-)
RIP little guppies.
We've never been big fans of Petco. Everytime I'm in one of those places I just end up with higher blood pressure.
do you have a heater? I worked at a non-sprawl "real" pet store when I was in high-school. It always bugged me how those big box stores don't give any good advice about fish care.
Tropical fish (like tetras and guppies) really need warmer-than-room-temp water, unlike the nearly indestructable gold fish. It's been years since I did this sort of fish thing, but I'd suggest looking up temps. I could talk your ear off about ammonia/nitrite levels and proper gravel types, but I'll leave that till later if you want more info...
Good luck!
I sympathize! This weekend, in order to get our three fish into a larger home, my husband inadvertently killed them all. And then to top it all off, the whole service at church on Sunday (after the burials) was about fish!! Poor Daddy!! Kids were stoic and we'll be trying again on Friday. Wish us luck!
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