I work at Petco and I know that the ordering is only partially the responsibility of the person ordering it. Only fish on the planogram set at the corporate level may be ordered which means we get a list of say 6 fish and we decide how many of those 6 fish we want to order. Sometimes fish are sent that were not ordered. My store stopped carrying marine fish in November. We were experiencing a high death rate in our tanks but it was not for a lack of trying or knowledge by the staff. The water we had to use was filtered but I don't think its
RO/DI. The UV sterilizer bulb was out for I don't know how long and the district manager said we didn't have the money to replace it. We never sold any corals but we did get in the occasional long tentacled or condy anemone which never did well but they didn't supply us with the proper food or lighting for them. While I was initially disappointed that we stopped selling marine livestock I do realize that it was probably for the best.
However, I will not be signing the petition because I don't think that all Petco stores should stop selling marine livestock. A lot of them probably should simply because they don't live in a big enough market for people at the corporate level to justify buying things like
RO/DI filters, UV sterilizers and proper lighting. The problem Petco has is that someone from the other side of the country can go rant on a message board about how crappy the Petco near them is and that makes someone not want to go to their Petco. But if I go on and on about how Joe's Blow's Reef Shop down the street is the worst place to get anything from, most of you aren't really going to care. I have often found that workers at independent shops (especially owners) will give you more sketchy advice to make a dollar than your average Petco/Petsmart worker because there is no direct incentive for the big corporate store worker to just sell sell sell all they can. It just really bothers me that people go to 1 or 2 Petco stores and decide that the company is horrible and no one should go there ever for anything. Frankly, saying you don't support Petco for anything sounds silly to me. The Petco foundation spends loads of money every year helping out animals in need. Right now we're doing a fundraiser in which all of the money brought in goes directly to local shelters, Petco doesn't keep a dime. The foundation has also helped out animals during the California wildfires, after hurricane Katrina and animals left without owners after the events on September 11, 2001.
