sad death

[bettaamatuer]

a few days ago i went to petsmart and i was looking at all the animals. i went to the fish part and i was asking a question and the petsmart lady was answering me while she was looking at the bettas and all the sudden she stopped talking and was looking an empty cup. She started looking for him and she looked on ground, there he was just laying on the ground, dead it was one of the saddest things i had ever seen. it also looked like he might of been stepped on a few times. it was horrible

[fuzzyferretluver]

That is so sad! How could no one (especially the petstore lady) not have noticed till then?

[amanichen]

Having actually worked in a retail pet store as an aquatics specialist, I was lucky if I was allowed to spend the amount of time caring for the fish that I wanted to. My store was always understaffed, and being a jack of all trades meant I was often off doing other things rather than spending the (minimum necessary) four hours a day on aquarium maintenance.

If the betta cups don't have lids, it's easy for them to jump out.

[Spitfire]

That's horrible! I have a feeling that a lot of fish meet easily-preventable deaths in stores, though.

I stopped at Wal-Mart on my way home last night for something, so of course I had to go look at the bettas as I always do. I was looking at the females (they had some very nice ones) when a lot of motion from one of the little plastic cups for the males caught my eye. When I looked into the cup, I saw that someone had put two male bettas together in one of those little plastic containers that Wal-Mart keeps their bettas in! There weren't any empty containers around, so I'm not sure where he came from and couldn't remove it. The two bettas were already fighting quite violently, and of course I couldn't find a single Wal-Mart employee in the pet section (had to tell some other confused-looking employee who promised to find someone to fix it). They had also unpackaged several of the types of betta havitats they sell and put fish in them for display purposes and left them sitting on the top shelf with no lids... another disaster waiting to happen.

[twoluvcats]

i have also had to bring 2 beat up males in the same cup to the attention of store employees...most are mortified, and I think it is done by non-employees 'having a little fun'. Its awful the cruel ways people will find to entertain themselves.

[bettaamatuer]

twoluvcats, i think think the betta jumped out. i don't think someone took him out, but im not 100% sure.