Reptile & Amphibian Forums

They renovated the whole interior of the store. And they have hired a new lady who seems to know something about keeping reptiles!!! The encolsures are still pretty small, but the habitats are correct and there is no mixing of species. All the animals seem much healthier and happier!!! It is just one store, but every small step matters.
On a funny note, some of the mice at Petco had babies and I was looking at the pinkies, wondering if they would sell me one or two for my leos. But a mother (who was with her young daughter admiring the hamsters) was eyeing me suspiciously because I had just come out of the reptile section with a bag of crickets, and a case of mealworms (she was no dummy!!!). I refrained from asking about the pinkies at the register because I think I would have gotten the typical "Are you crazy?" look. I have to remind myself that not everyone thinks its natural to feed live mice to their pets!!!

Cleo
1:1 leos...soon to be 1:5!!!

Hi. I am glad to hear your store has improved. The one by me looks nice and they sell the best variety of food(mealworms in differant sizes and differant sizes in mice,live or frozen).I know from personal experiance though that it is still not a good idea to buy an animal from them, it breaks your heart when they don't make it.
I wish more of the pet stores would clean up there act and hire some people who actually know something about what they are selling.
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Carolyn
1 Leopard Gecko, 1 Corn snake,1 Pacman,2 Firebelly Toads,5 cats,3 dogs, and 2 newts

The petstore near my house is quite good. All their set ups are correct and they have great looking animals. They have some awsome monitors, and one theyve had for like a year. The people there are nice, though I must look kinda weird, a 13 year old buying mice pinks? Glad to hear tthey cleaned up their act, now going there wont be such a pain having to look at all the animals, l8er
MaC

Dude, MaC, I fell ya. I am 13 too. When I first went to that pet store and went to ask for stuff like that, the people would kinda look at me like, "yeah, right." but they would still give me my order. But now they know me and everything, so, everythings good.
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*Nate*the*Great*

man, i wish thats how it is at my petco. mines still a dump. i hate going there and seeing the animals in crappy conditions. it makes me want to buy them just so i can help. but it hurts to know i can't. i applied for a job at mine once in hope to work with the reptiles and improve things a little, but they don't like me because im always telling them hao wrong they are treating the animals. i only go there when i absolutley have to and i tell everyone i know not to by live animals from them. ive boughten two leopard geckos from the same petco what died because it was real sick. they didn't tell me this when i was a thirteen year old kid who was just trying to buy a pet! the other one had a cronic infection that cost a fortune to get better. (it was worth it). So anyways, i just wish my petco would clean up its act a little. its not even a big one, youd think they figure it out eventually.

geckogurl_04

even have to tell them what i'm going to do with them, they just tell me no, because i'm 14 and they know i have reptiles, or else i wouldn't buy them. they told me that i would torcher the mice then feed them off! they're stupid! they won't even let my mom buy them because they've seen her before. my leos won't take dead ones so i have to get live ones but they won't let me! i don't know what their problem is.

You know what I dont get, since when are they suc great people that dont like to see animals suffer? Like come on, next time they tell u something like that, why dont you tell them to clean their damn cages! THEN, they'll have the right to say something like that...the nerve of them, jeesh.

I buty mealworms at the petco near me, and always look in on the geckos to see how they are doing. I saw one that had a broken tail ase and the stub was emaciated, the legs were emaciated, you could see the spine protruding but the stomach was grossly bloated, it was lying out half dead in corner next to a pile of dried runny poo. I asked to see it (didn't touch it!), so I could talk to the store about it, and the girl said it had been in the back (probably the one that looked very sick and I told them to remove and take to a vet a couple weeks ago), she didn't know who put it in here. I told her it looked like it had crypto. She asked what it was, I told her it is like gecko Ebola, which is very contagious, and the gecko should be removed immediately. I thought about telling her that the other geckos would already have been exposed and the enclosure should be sterilized and the geckos taken out and quarantined and not sold, but I know they wouldn't do it anyway, the girl didn't even know what crypto was. I then asked her to lift a hide so I could see the other babies, and there was a dead squished baby gecko stuck under it. It's head was glued to the bottom of the rock by it's own brains and the little rotting purple body was hanging by the head. Apparently someone set the hide down and smashed its head. Maybe that was the one that got lucky...

There were some nice looking baby geckos in there, albinos and what looked like it would be a tangerine. Too bad they will all probably die of crypto.

I would have been screaming for the ASPCA the moment I saw that squished baby....probably would have been kicked out of the store!!!

Cleo
1:1 leos...soon to be 1:5!!!

It was pretty awful. I thought about it. But it was obviously human error...and it was too late for that baby to be helped.

I committed human error myself today. I discovered this afternoon that I accidently pinched off a 1/2cm tail end of one of my little albinos that just hatched yesterday when I put the lid back on the container. It got stuck apparently- I feel bad, put some neosporin on it, though it didn't look bloody or anything, and was such a small end of the tip the gecko should not look disfigured when it grows up. Still it is terrible to think I accidently hurt one of my little babies, I felt awful.

At the Petco, I was actually more concerned about the gecko that looked like it had crypto, as if it does it will infect all the other geckos and potentially all the other reptiles they have there.

haha, a few months ago i lost my patience with a lady who owns a pet store. they had a baby common boa, that looked really gross, skinny and retained sheds, the works. it was disgusting how the kept it, a boa on SAND! and it had no hides or anything. it was a 10 gallon tank, with sand a very small water bowl and some dead mouse that was way too big. i argued with her about that for a while, then i argued with her whether a snake she had was a kingsnake or a milksnake, and i ended up right. i hate her, and im not allowed to buy from them any more, lol.
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your head will collapse, but there's nothing in it, and you'll ask yourself, "where is my mind"

I walked into my local petco the other day and they had baby albino ratsnakes covered in mites. they were everywhere. on the snakes in the skin and the eyes. they were on all the hides and in the substrate. the poor things looked half dead. not to mention there wre five in a twelve by ten enclosure. when i told the manager they had mights she said that it was normal and they would go away on their own! can you believe that load of crap! She probably didn't even know what they were. I hate petco. they are s**t when it comes to animals.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't crypto a zoonotic disease? If so, call the health department immediately. PetCo will learn that they need to be knowledgeable about the animals they sell, and take care of problems like this immediately. If those sick animals pose a risk to human health, Petco certainly WILL pay....

It might not be for the reason we'd choose, but they will learn a lesson.

Cryptosporidium Serpentis is not as far as I know known to cause disease in humans, though there are other types of crypto which are somewhat zoonotic (C. Felis, C. Canis)

My Petco by where I live is great. It is very clean and has one of the best reptile sections i've ever seen.
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*Nate*the*Great*

The petco we go to has just gotten new cages. They look much better. A few of the people there actually know what they are doing. I wrote a complaint to the corp office because they will not allow their hatchlings to be on sand. They do not supply pinheads, baby mealworms, earth worms or pinks. I screamed about that too. We have been supplying the store with the first three so the babies can eat (as well as others). There was an albino in there once that looked like it had been dropped, they let me take another home that was SOOOO tiny. It died a few days later. It was already too far gone. The two people that we really like there, one has moved, the other is at the end of the month. Sorry to see them go.
There is another store in the area (Petco) that is AWEFUL!!

Why would you want them to put their babies on sand?
(confused)