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People assume that they can easily have the same amount of fish pet stores have. They also don’t realize It’s not good for the fish.

“Why do I have to let my dog roam around outside/in my house when puppy mills keep their dogs in 2*3 cages?”

This was a thorough explanation, thank you, I’ve tried to tell people this before but they just use pet stores as an excuse to abuse fish

I have this amazing fish store that if you’re buying a tank they will not let you buy more goldfish than you should and they will ask what size your tank is before they let you buy a fish

😂 because we care more than them !! 🙌

I wish I could show this video to difficult customers at the store I work at. You explained this so well!

Can confirm, I used to work at a pet store for more than two years. The fish would often ARRIVE sick in the first place. There was a huge 75 gallon tank with way too many “feeder” goldfish and it was just horrendous. 50+ fish would die every day. The water would be changed once a day, as there were more than 10 different tanks in the store, and that definitely wasn’t enough, even with medicine and treatments added once a day as well. The regular pet goldfish would be kept in 20 gallon tanks, and there would be more than 10 in there. They said it was alright because “they would be selling fast” but then they would tell us to sell the goldfish with tanks and bowls way too small for the way they would grow. Soooo many people had no idea how fast and how BIG goldfish actually grew to, and that they can actually live for more than a decade easily. They were almost always impulse buys for children, and I had to explain many, many times that fish should never be impulsively bought, and after a discussion, many would change their minds. Unfortunately some just didn’t care and bought the fish anyways. They would die within a month. It was heartbreaking. The goal would be to just sell as much as you can, and I was horrified to learn that they would ENCOURAGE bad fish keeping, for example selling betta fish with those awful tiny bowls. I think I was the only one that would give good advice, such as getting a 5-10 gallon tank for the betta fish along with a heater, and that you would actually need a 20 gallon tank for a single goldfish instead of keeping multiple in a 5 to 10 gallon like they would encourage you to. Safe to say I didn’t sell as much as the other workers because I actually cared about the animals. Luckily the place went out of business. I would never work in a pet store again. The cruelty is unbelievable.

(as a pet store employee) YES you're completely right on that last bit. And that goes for all of the animals we sell tbh. Hamsters, guinea pigs, snakes, leopard gecko's, beardies... BIRDS. All of it

I used to work at a petco for 2 years. And what he said is a million percent accurate. Sometimes literally the entire shipment would die overnight and I’d have to scoop them all out before we open. I’m talking multiple small bags of like 3-5 inch goldfish all dead.

Go to most chain pet store (and some so called “specialty” fish stores) in Australia, you are almost guaranteed to see sick, dying or straight up dead goldfish in their “hundreds cramped in there” tanks… that alone is enough reason for me not to stock too much fish in my own tank.

Thank you. My grandparents took me to get fish at a pet store when I was young and ignorant about fish and the conditions they kept their fish in looking back on it was horrendous. They had betta fish hanging like toys in impossibly small plastic(?) containers literally as big as the fish, I have no idea how they were alive as there was no way for oxygen to get in. The problem with many fish stores is that their main focus is profit and no one seems to really know anything about fish, I imagine they go through hundreds of dead fish and just replace them as they die. They can be truly despicable places.

This man makes me realize how and why my goldfish died as a kid.

People often forget there’s a huge difference between surviving and thriving. If you are going to take responsibility for another living being, you need to make sure it can thrive. Thank you for using your platform to educate people.

Thank you for this video! I used to work at Petsmart. Despite disliking the care environment I always tried to explain this to my customers. 1 goldfish, 50 gallons amazing advice! I used to get angry when my co workers would sell a goldfish to someone who was going to put it in a 5 gallon. My heart broke when not even 3 days later they'd come back dead.

That’s really nice to know! I’ve always wondered about that because some fish breeds are quite small. But like any animal they have specific needs and best care practices. Thank you!

My goldfish died a few days ago😭 RIP Big Brain (aka BB)

Facts! Just because a pet store keeps pets in tiny enclosures, it doesn’t mean the pets will enjoy living in there for the rest of their lives.

As someone who works at a pet store i feel better having lukes goldies basically reaffirming what i know 🥺 I basically have to tell people that all the time and the last point i agree with whole heartedly

Attempt 2 of asking for a goldfish to be named yogurt

Day 16 of reccomending the name: "Jaba the Hutt" for one of your most chonky babies

Facts. I work for a large petstore chain. At our location, usually we only get goldfish deaths the day of and after a shipment so it’s the fish that got too stressed out died. Something that helps with all the waste is the fact our store has a MASSIVE filter for the goldfish. It is huge and still requires the water in the filter to be changed daily

Pet stores tend to have poor care for all of there animals. Especially reptiles

I thought goldfish were boring until I saw his channel. Now I think they are cute

Worked at a petstore before. They don't take care of fish well.

As someone who works at a pet store do *not* base any of your pet care on how the store set up looks. Most of the animals can not be cohabitated long term especially in the small enclosures, and they have just their minimum needs met. Remember it’s not just about how much space the animal *physically* takes up but also other factors like activity level. Always do your own research and cross check your info.

One thing I do regret on not getting is medicine or a spare tank to quarantine my one and only Thai Oranda Goldie 🥲 my Tetras and guppies used to thrive with him in the tank going left to right but sadly he passed away due to an infection. RIP Brocoli :/. Always be prepared y’all. Always.

Another thing to mention, a lot of the single tail goldfish you see in overcrowded tanks are meant to be feeder fish. Their only purpose is to be eaten. Which is another issue as a lot of times the feeder goldfish are sick and diseased and will bring that into the aquarium of the fish you are feeding them to. But yeah, glad you made this short and sweet informative video.

i work for petsmart and agree 100% with everything said. another reason we can get away with so many fish in such "small" tanks is because our tanks are technically just one big tank with seperators. this allows a lot more room for mistakes and makes it so much easier to keep ammonia down.

The pet store near me takes care of them and tell people not to use bowls and I think that's sweet

Preach!!!

As a Petsmart worker, I second all of this

The last one is important for all animals at the pet store

I remember someone asking why we had so many goldfish in one tank... "Well, it's a 1600 gallon system with a filter the size of a jacuzzi."

I genuinely wish you did longer videos

Thank you for this!! I work at a petstore and this is 1000% true. It's incredibly difficult to maintain water quality and often times there are a fair amount of diseased fish which is why some tanks will be labeled as under observation. This may or may not be due to care and water quality though sometimes they come from the breeders sick after transport. Lots of factors as to why pet stores have ridiculous amounts of fish in their tanks. Not a goal just a merchandising flaw.

I feel like taking care of goldfish is slightly harder than taking care of let's say, cats or dogs. I salute you for taking the time to actually take care of your goldfish properly. I once knew a person who kept buying goldfish because they didn't bother to research what they should do beforehand so their fish kept dying 😔😔😔

Honestly. I had a Betta for nearly four years (they usually live 3-5 in captivity) going from 3 to 5 to 10 gallons. Supremely healthy fish until the end. I then tried to get fish from another store, and both betta died. Poor in-store care/breeding meant that they were doomed, no matter how hard I tried.

As someone who used to work at a pet store I can agree they were kept in bad conditions. The whole time I worked there only one person knew how to actually take care of the fish because he had big tanks of his own but after he left everything went down hill. The managers didn’t care to fill the role with people who knew how to take care of fish so I would try my best to help keep them in good care. Because of that they tried making me responsible for the fish even though I barely knew anything I told them I could help as much as I could as I didn’t know much about fish keeping I just helped cause I didn’t want to keep seeing sooo many fish die and live in horrible conditions! I wasn’t provided any type of education of how to take care of the fish and had to do a lot of my own research to help keep the fish a live and prevent other workers from killing the fish. Pet stores are the worst place for animals the animal manger let so many animals die fish, reptiles, birds, and small animals it was terrible! We had animal control called on us so many times but the animal manger was always able to bullshit his way out of it and never got in trouble with animal control or with the company!

Used to work manage a pet store - people could never grasp that those 75 gallon tanks with like 25 small goldfish in them in the store.....are not what you can do at home. I had people testing + changing that water constantly...I kept goldfish for 10 years (messiest and probably one the most difficult fish you can keep....probably on par with discus IMO)

Yeah the pet stores here in Ireland don't take good care of their fish I often see very murky water and 50 goldfish in a 10 gallon we even once bought a goldfish in one amd he had a disease luckily he's recovered since but I won't be buying from there again

I remember seeing a dead fish in one of the tanks at either Petsmart or Petco years back. It caught my attention because some of the other fish in the tank started eating it. I told an employee, and he said they will naturally start doing that if one of them dies.

You have this with me trying my best to save my fish from a tank emergency. Had 5 or so apple snails slime a 45g tank out over night almost and I lost a lot of troopers sadly. I tried to change the water as often as I reasonably could after pitching the snails, but I sadly only had one survivor. A pleco that could survive a nuke.

I do just want to note as someone that works at a chain pet store, that a lot of the fish arrive sick/dying/dead. We're also limited in what kinds of medication we use because of the way the filtration systems work (e.g. can't use copper-based medication in a system that also feeds the shrimp/snail tanks)

fun facts about Micheal fish, we had 80 belief, small ones that were like feeders, but they were just playing orange. We had them for around 10 years, and they were named bubble trouble. One had a tumor, but it's still lived for years on end, they cut to about 6 inches, and we just continued into the, we accidentally added, tomorrow, a couple more fish and those ones also guide with all the face died in that bank, we didn't know how to corn peen the fish

That last point you made is really good to keep in mind. When I was in about 5th grade, my younger brother had a teacher who would give her guppies to her students, with parent consent of course, and this particular year we got the okay in getting the fish. When we went to Walmart to look for a tank for the little guys, and we walked by the fish tanks. It was the most horrifying thing I had seen yet in my life. There were piles, large piles, of dead, rotting fish stuck on the vent to the water filter. This was the case for most of those small tanks. Some fish tanks had fish that were supposed to be colorful, were all a white or grey color, and most of them were eating from the dead fish carcasses on the filter vent. It made me really want to take care of those fish the teacher gave us, and I'll never forget those conditions those poor fish were in.

Yeah they should ban bowls. So many goldfish and betta tragedies

Omg I have always wanted a white body goldfish with a orange head and I saw one in this video so pretty!😍

Such a good video with so many good points!

I won a goldfish at a school fair when I was in first grade - and by the time he passed (when I was out of college) he was a foot and half long. He was our only fish and lived with two frogs (from those grow-a-frog kits) in a 50-gallon tank.

Also.. depends on the breed. Common goldfish need like 80gal

I used to work for PetSmart. The system we had for maintenance was really good. Honestly our store took care of the pets very well. We had one guy that worked in the pet department with fish. He was actually going to school to become an ickologist.

I bought 2 axolotls last year and the conditions they were in before they were in my custody was horrific-

plus most pet stores are selling common and comet goldfish with 100 fish in a 30-50 gallon and those are all under 2-3inch fish that will all grow to be incredibly large, usually between 8-18 inches long.

As someone who worked at a pet store Behind the wall is a giant filtration system And two I had to take out so many dead fish a day and so many were sick

I agree, i work in a pet store and I'm the only one that actually tries to take care of the fish, And I still honestly cant take care of them properly.

As someone who works at a petstore that keeps fish anytime someone asks me why they need a large tank for a few fish when we have many in smaller tanks I show them the 4 sumps in the back which handles our daily water changes. I then explain that if they want to do what we do they will need these sumps and it will only be a few thousand dollars opposed to a few hundred dollars spent on proper care.

There is a pet store near my house that keeps (ADULT) Betta in containers that are barely enough to allow the fish some swimming room. It has so much algae in them, I want to save those poor fish

Many goldfish live for 15 to 20 years Fancy goldfish get 6 to 8 inches long Regular goldfish can get up to 18 inches long (over a foot) All goldfish produce more waste than a normal fish making Regular water changes or extra strong filters a necessity. Goldfish are not begginer pets. Please don't release them into lakes when they inevitably become too much.

Ok I didn't know much but this is something I did know n I know a lot of people should def hear this info!

I LOVE UR VIDS!!!❤️❤️❤️

Have you ever killed one of your goldfish by leaving out of water for to long?

So I got a Goldie one time put it in a hospital tank and eventually checked the water parameters. It was off the charts with nitrite because I just dumped the bag in after floating and the water in the goldies tank at the pet store was so bad it completely screwed that hospital tank. I actively make the folks at big box pet stores feel like ahit for the way they treat fish and most of them just don't care. Alway alway always buy fish from your local mom and pop stores might be a bit further but always worth it

Don’t model how to care for any animal from pet stores, period. I have a ball python (bought from a breeder) and my research showed exactly what humidity/temperature range he requires. Big pet stores keep ball pythons in low humidity, cooler environments with little space to roam or hide. And often times they’re sick or far too thin. Snakes can go a long time without eating, so I don’t know how they can starve one to get to that point.

I had a 55 gallon tank with 8 goldfish and even with a 100 gallon canister filter that was still 2-3 times a week now that all of them have passed due to a situation I couldn’t control I’m upgrading to a 75 for my goldfish to hopefully cut back on the cleaning

If you go to a pet store, and look over at the betta section, it's very sad. The betta fish are in very small cups with lids, not even real tanks. This stresses them out a ton.

I was gonna say, yea- Biggest point is most main stream pet stores don't take the time to deep dive into how to properly care for their fish. It's not really worth it to them (thought it should be) because it's all about buy and sell.

When my mom takes us to the pet store to buy food for Nala (the bearded dragon) me and my little brother love looking at the cats and fish and we saw multiple fish lying an the bottom

I was at a pet store the other day, and the fishtanks were so dirty, and full of fish. No plants, just small rocks surrounded and covered with green stuff. Later I went to a garden center (?) with mostly plants, flowers, fountains, garden-things. They had fish too, and those tanks looked really really clean. The fish seemed way more relaxed and were not overcrowded. Indeed, petstore owners don't care for fish I guess... People who work with nature all day do though.

My ryukin: HAHA quadruple is that it 😂😂

*CHONKY FISH*

That guy is probably never heard of ammonia spike

Yeah and image those beta fishes in the little cups at pet stores. It’s so sad to see, I’ve never been a big beta fan but I wish I could take them all home.

It's sad that I never even knew what an adult goldfish looked like before your channel, I've never owned a fish myself but it seems like everyone's fishes were always dieing

Hey, not sure if you've already answered but i've been curious about this- what are the blobs on top of the goldfish' heads? Are they like- liquid brains or nothing vital?

The most important thing he said here, was the last part. Never model what you do after the pet store. Huge misconception, leading to a full on societal ignorance.

I prefer a display tank with a secondary tank hidden below

We need Jezzelle or Devin or Bailey or Ian!

Now do you mean common goldfish or the ones you have when it comes to the 50/40 gallon tank?

If anything I work at the pet store. We keep goldfish feeders! In a huge group. Most get eaten and usually die due to bad quality of water. No that is not recommended for the goldfish. The ones that are meant as pets are kept in 3s at the least in our other tanks though and even with that need more space and a lot of water changes. They get sick easily too.

people ask me this everyday. I work at a retail exotic store, One fish system of ours is 1,200 Gallons, The “tank” is 40g with baby goldfish…. We don’t keep them their whole life, think of it as a waiting room

I only trust local fish stores that are family owned and stuff. Or just local🤣

Yeah most big store pet store can buy a fish in bulk but a ma and pa store can only buy like 2 or 4 fish and most places are getting their fish from the same provayor

Hey Luke can you do a video on what makes a show goldfish please

Well this fish store that I go to get my fishes they actually do a great job of taking care of the fish so if you guys want to get fish from a high quality place go to aqua imports in boulder Colorado because I dont see that many dead fish there that I see at pet smart.

That's right I'm loved your videos bro

Hey Luke, There are so many fish medication products online and I don’t know what ones to buy for when my fish get sick. Can you help?

Yesss preach my mom loves guppy’s and I always tell her “mom we can not go to pet smart we go to the one up in Jersey” because we one pet smart fish that survived of over like 10

day fifteen of asking him to name a fish Moo

8-year-old me with three fish in a 10 gallon tank they've been living for a year and one of them I got from the fair and they haven't died: weakling bow before me in My Army of children

Name a fish Finn

As the new "fish guy" at our pet store I can confirm you should not follow the way we keep our fish, the tanks are usually extremely dirty and I pull on average 8 dead fish out per day, it's extremely sad to see as someone who loves animals and I will try to change this situation in my store every chance I get :)

You should look into getting a sump or canister

Hey Luke, I have a question for you. What is the maximum lifespan of a goldfish?

day FIFTY of asking you to name a fish forrest

D.10 Can you name a fish carrot cake?

I love you luke 🐶

Hi Luke! In this morning while feeding my 1 year Goldfish and another 1 year goldfish I saw that they we're doing something that looked like breeding. I quickly checked for eggs but there weren't any. It isn't that early in the morning so could it have happend that they spawned earlier and ate them. I tried to handspawn them but they had no eggs and no sperm. If you could tell me if they have egss or have no eggs.

THANK YOU!!! Goddamn, I am SO sick of people coming in and going "well why can't i get ONE goldfish, you guys have like a million in there??" PET STORES DO NOT GIVE A FLYING FEATHERED FANNIED **FUCK** about these fish!!!! They care about making MONEY

Another problem is the fish are feeder fish...we don't sell them to keep as pets there meant to be fed to bigger fish (I don't recommend feeder fish at all and don't understand why Petco and PetSmart keep adding a feeder section) that's also why you see a separate tank with fancy goldfish that isn't usually overstocked