Howdy All

[TheDuckyOne]

Hello from Matthews, NC. I just thought that I would introduce myself briefly. I am 23 years old, got into the fish hobby as a little girl (I had a 10 gallon tank, with a pink kisser and neon tetras...outfitted with the coolest in red and blue incandesent lighting) but got out of it for a while after I let barbie go swimming in my tank and killed all of my fish. I spent my younger years fishing on the many lakes in my native Dallas, TX area, but didnt keep fish again until I was 17 years old, and got a job at PetsMart. On my first day I bagged up some jellybean cichlids and some neon tetras, and was *very* sternly repremanded by my manager. After that, I wasnt sure I even wanted to come back...but I did, and bought many books, and listened very intently to the advice of the older and wiser members of the staff...and learned a whole lot about fish. I aquired a 20 gallon tank, and kept in beautifully planted, and maintained australian rainbows and buenos aires tetras in it for a couple years until I moved to NC. The tank was promply garaged, and was replaced by a Eclipse System 6 (i found it at goodwill for 6 bucks) that I turned into a mini reef.

Fast foward about 4 years...I work as an "aquatic specialist" (fancy name for fish bagger) at a LFS. Yesterday I pulled that 20 gallon out of the garage, set it back up...and I will bring home my first tropical fish in many years tommorow. Asuming the water cloud dies down (damn you florite). I am setting up a 29 gallon tank later this week, and another 29 in about a month. I am looking forward to talking fish with other people who have been infected with the virus.

Its a sickness I tell you. Obviously something is wrong with me if I can come home from work, where I care tens of thousands of gallons of water, and proceed to care for EVEN MORE water at home. Sick, sick, sick.

Anyway, its nice to meet everyone, I look forward to chatting, and being as helpful as I can (not ALL LFS are bad, after all...and I know better then to put tetras and cichlids together now )

[Georgia Peach]

great intro! Welcome to the Fish forums - there are alot of really nice people here, very friendly and full of advice!

[Fishfirst]

welcome to fish forums, a fellow petsmart employee here, you'll soon learn that not everything everyone told you at petsmart is true (especially if they learned it from those B.S. training books) I'm sure you've already learned that though, have fun on the forum and I'll hopefully see you in the sw section.

[TheDuckyOne]

Thanks I worked at Petsmart many years ago, late 90's. There was a training program back then called PACE, but my understanding is that they discontinued that program. It was only so so as far as information. I learned alot from picking up books and Barnes & Nobles...and of course, I was lucky enough to not only work with experinced keepers, but we had several regulars who kept all kinds of tanks...I always asked them more questions then they asked me lol.

Now I work at a Petland...the quality varies from Petland to Petland (privately owned franchises) but the one I work at is awesome. The two other guys in the department and I will regularly get together and discuss fish until 5 am. Its great to meet other people in retail. We get a bad rep, but theres alot of us who care and who are reasonably experinced. Now if I could only get my customers to stop listening to what the clerk at wal-mart tells them....

[Fishfirst]

hahah, dam that clerk! I get a lot of that from people who went to petco first. I hate when their first words are "petco told me..." don't get me wrong, some of their employees know what they are talking about or refer to me for information so its not always bad info, but sometimes things like "they said my black ghost knife would be fine in my 55 gallon" get to me ... glad to hear that petland has some good employees too who care. Unfortunately our reputation has gone down in our city as of late as we changed pet care managers. Our new one is from "corprates backyard" and thinks he is god of knowing all. Kind of funny when he returned his fish the other day that didn't make it. Out of 8, 6 fish died... thats more fish that I've killed in 3 years and I have 10 tanks of them .

[TheDuckyOne]

LOL yea. I had a manager once tell a customer that the best way to do regular maintenance on the tank was to remove all of the gravel and boil it. That about says it all. The owners at our store, and the managers for that matter, are pretty much hands off when it comes to the fish department, which is really nice. For the most part they trust that we are doing the right thing, and as long as we keep the tanks reasonably free of algae, they dont say too much. I worked for Petco for a while, and I can verify that they are freaking AWFUL, and a lousy company to work for too. Also worked briefly at Dallas North Aquariums and Pet Pros. The latter was actually worse then Petco...they had no water heater, and the tanks didnt fill automatically. And almost none of the tanks had heaters (when I plugged in the heaters, the power would go out in the store) So I had to decide between not changing the water, and killing the fish...or changing the water and adding cold water...and killing the fish. I only worked there a few months, just couldnt put up with it any longer.

[Fish Friend]

welcome to the tank !!

[euRasian32]

Welcome! Nice intro.

[fish_doc]

Welcome,
It gets to be pretty bad when you have more water in your house than the pool or pond out back. LOL

Welcome to the MTS club.

[maxpayne_lhp]

Hello! Welcome to FishForums.com

[fishfreaks]

Welcome to fish forums, we hope that you'll stick around!

[TheDuckyOne]

Thanks for all the kind replies....you dont know what youve gotten yourself into, now ill be like algae, youll never really be rid of me.