Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I went to three pet stores over the weekend in the San Diego area. Two were petcos and one was a petsmart. At both of the petcos theh FBT's were soo skinny it was unbelieveable. They looked like they were from Somolia or something. There were at least two dead ones in the main tank. It was sickening. It was kinda ironic too because they had this special display specifically about them and it mentioned how easy they were to keep. Its real easy to keep them when you dont feed them. Then the White's tree frogs all had infected noses where they had been rubbing them on the glass. They were pretty skinny looking too. I complained (waste of time) but the manager gave me a bs excuse that they were a new shipment and thats why they were in bad shape. I suggested that they obtain them from a different source but im sure that will ever happen. Its not only big corporations though. I went to a local mom and pop store and they had two fire bellied toads a leopard frog and what i think was an american toad in a 5 gallon tank with one tiny water dish. Disgusting. Why dont some of those whacko PETA people do something about this?How inhumanely is a cow killed? Im sure more humanely then being starved to death. I must say though, every petsmart that i have ever been in has had great looking animals. (although their waxworms always die quickly on me) One time at the La Jolla petsmart one of the workers was talking to the bearded dragons as she fed them. I dont understand how people can knowingly work at a place where frogs and other animals are suffering and dieing painful deaths.

That probably wasn't a BS excuse, it happens. That's the main reason their animals are so sick. Unfortunately no one who works at that store has the power to change their supplier. You can write their corporate office but who knows what good that does.
Petsmart has really turned around, though, even their leopard geckos look nice.
All we can do is completely boycott crappy stores, and tell other people, like dog owners, to do the same. Drygoods sales is where they really make their money and those stores do get shut down by corporate if their sales are bad.
You REALLY don't want PETA in the pet trade any more than they are, let them stick to cows and minks. PETA will say that no one has a right to keep a wild animal like a frog in captivity, and will do their best to make owning them illegal.
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Peter: It's OK, I'll handle it. I read a book about something like this.
Brian: Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't NOTHING?

I have gotten some froglet horned frogs from petsmart and they have always looked good to me, they keep them in little cups with bed-a-beast so it must be easier to change, unlike the horned frogs at petco that are kept in kritter keepers that are in stagment nasty water, always look sick or somthing. I bought one horned frog from petco that was wild caught I think, because the pattern was like the ones I have seen that were wild caught. Of course it died about a week later.

I wouldn't say just because they are thin or their patterns look the same as wild ones is a reason to say they are wild ones. They very well could be (and with horned frogs, many likely are) CBs, bad care will kill any animal, WC or not. Shipping still stresses out CBs. I'm not going to say every PetsMart is great either (I used to work at one) but their policies are different in that they don't KNOWLING buy WC animals (some slip through, but for the most part they are CB). They also attempt to train their staff... although I can't say it works all the time.

I do know of Petcos that are really nice reptile wise.... but thats also because I know the reptile people working there and would trust my own animals with them.

Petstores are only as good as the people working there are!

Yeah well I was talking about "my" Petco and they know nothing.

I know what you mean. There are several local pet stores here where I live and only one of them takes good care of their animals. It's actually Petsmart believe it or not, but the store was remodeled about a year or so back and ever since then they have been really amazing at keeping their animals. They don't have too much though, but the care of the animals that they do have is pretty good. The WORST pet store that I have ever been to is Pets Wharehouse. The only reason I go to them is because they have more animals than Petsmart has and I like to look at the animals, but the way that they keep the animals is really sad. There is one that has a pond outside the store that is filled with goldfish and in the winter they don't even take the fish out! They let them freeze in there. It doesn't even make any sence to me as they are wanting to sell these fish and then they let them freeze to death? Weird...Also, at the same one I saw 3 Russian Tortoises housed in a cage not even fit for a house gecko. They could barely even move, was really sad. And in one cage, I saw dead crickets in the water dish and they had been in there for awhile because they had turned white. That isn't even half of it. Practically all their reptiles and other animals are housed in cages way too small for them and most of them don't look too healthy. Not sure if it's like that at every store, but all the stores (and there are three of them) around here are not good.

If the pond is deep enough, the goldfish do fine living under the ice all winter. It's the same thing as hibernating a garter snake- they just sleep for a while.
If the pond is not deep enough, then that's just gross.
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Peter: It's OK, I'll handle it. I read a book about something like this.
Brian: Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't NOTHING?

I've only been to one good petsmart before. All the pet cos i have been to have had nice looking animals except for one store that had a tank full of dead whites tree frogs. The petsmarts i've been too have alot of sick animals and no people that know anything about reptiles. I have seen one person there tell the customer that there millipede needs sand substrate and will eat reptomin and crickets. Then another petsmart i have been to didnt have a tank labeled so i asked them what kind of gecko it was in the tank. I already knew it was a lined day gecko but i wanted to see what he would say. He told me oh we just caught that one hes been loose in the back for over 6 months. And the dude told me it was baby water dragon.

Your car parked out in front of that store is advertisement for people driving by to stop and shop there. Sounds harsh, but if they are not worthy of being open, dont indorse their buisness by even visiting them. Take a detailed report of the abuse, and report them. Follow up in your reports. Meet the animal control officers on site.
Dont let the foul pet trade on. The only way to see improvement is to take action! Even a bad pet store can become good.