Rate petco! 1-10

Our closest petco is about 35 mins away and their store is decent. The reptiles were in good looking shape, humidity and temps were good, the red-tail boas Ball and pythons and other lizards don't appear to be skinny. Only one employee seem to be nice and knew how to maintain Ball pythons...5 stars better than our local petsmart. :)

The Bird section was bad, some Macaws (think I spelled that right) looked very stress, dirty looking feathers in a bunch...feathers missing, too many birds in one cage. :colbert:

Small mammals section was in great shape and all the employee's knows plenty of knowledge on keeping them healthy. :D

But the fish weren't in good shape, algae in every tank, dead fish in the tanks fish with big eye disease (puffy eyes) in the tank. They need a bit of help in that section. :mad:

It's ok...

My local store is okay.
I wish they used better equipment in their reptile enclosures, but their animals seem pretty well fed-as long as they can get them to eat f/t...
I have a buddy who works there and he knows his stuff, but that is hard to come by in big chain stores sometimes.
I did look at a pastel girl today that had some beautiful blushing, but they want 150 for her and she's probably about 300 grams-they have 50% off all snakes right now but wont do it for the "Special Orders". if she's there another month or so they'll knock the price down and I'll haggle with the manager using the length of stay as leverage...

The did have a couple "minor morphs" in their beardie cage(I think anyways...)

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Originally Posted by SteveySingle

My local store is okay.
I wish they used better equipment in their reptile enclosures, but their animals seem pretty well fed-as long as they can get them to eat f/t...
I have a buddy who works there and he knows his stuff, but that is hard to come by in big chain stores sometimes.
I did look at a pastel girl today that had some beautiful blushing, but they want 150 for her and she's probably about 300 grams-they have 50% off all snakes right now but wont do it for the "Special Orders". if she's there another month or so they'll knock the price down and I'll haggle with the manager using the length of stay as leverage...

The did have a couple "minor morphs" in their beardie cage(I think anyways...)

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150 for a 300g pastel actually isn't too bad at all, as long as she actually is female. I would have expected something in the three hundred dollar range at the big box stores.

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These big chain petstores are an empty husk; their goodness, or lack thereof, to be determined by the staff employed at any particular location.

Well, as long as this thread is back in circulation... I've got some horror stories about my local petco. They have the commonplace problems like stressed birds with missing feathers, dirty goldfish tanks with a handful of dead fish, and small mammal tanks with carefresh that looks like it hasn't been changed in a month, but the reptile section is the worst. There's an employee there who claims to run a reptile rescue out of his house; whether he can do anything about how the reptiles in the store are kept, or whether he really doesn't know how to care for them at all, I don't know.

None of the reptiles there have hides, presumably so customers can always see them, and not a single animal ever has clean water. The bearded dragons (usually babies) are always kept on sand, piled on top of each other, looking extremely lethargic. Occasionally they have an older beardie with a missing foot or tail. The leopard geckos, about ten of them, are in the same conditions (sand), all huddled in the corner piled on top of one another because they have nowhere to hide during the day. The leos always have some stud shed on their eyelids and/or toes and they're skinny as can be. What really disgusted me once was a baby iguana with so much stud shed on its eyelids that the eye was swollen to twice its size. I wouldn't be surprised if it has died from the infection by now...

This petco doesn't often have BPs, but they're usually trying to hide in a corner or behind a perch because they have no hides. They also have a problem with the neighboring neonate corn slipping into the BP's enclosure through the glass divider, so I've seen the BP and corn coiled up together multiple times. The employee I talked to didn't seem concerned about fixing it.

The thing that absolutely infuriates me about this petco is how they keep their crested geckos. For a while they were keeping their cresties at temps in excess of 100 F--if anyone here has kept cresteds before, they would know temps above 85 can be fatal. And sure enough, I saw cresteds there cooked to death on two separate occasions from being kept too hot. I literally found a tiny crispy gecko corpse in the tank, twice. I talked to the employees about this multiple times, and only recently did I see a change. Now if only they would change their food every once in a while and stop trying to feed their geckos a bowl of solid mold.

I'm sure not every petco is this bad, but mine is pretty awful. Finding dead and dying reptiles in a store takes the cake for me. On the other hand, my local Petsmarts don't make any of these mistakes, they don't even use sand and their animals generally look healthy. I did buy a sick CWD from Petsmart before though and he was sick his whole life, so I still don't recommend anyone buy a pet from these chains, especially if the species you're buying is likely to be an import.

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i got two bps at petco the first seemed attentive, healthy but died three days later , extreme impaction was my best guess
i went back and they gave me another who just died in my hands after a vet found another bad impaction (after only a short time)
both snakes were sold with poor health. They were so thin, all I have to say is stay away from their reptiles

My Petco isn't too terrible - leopard geckos on reptile carpet, beardies on carpet, AND humid hides for the leos. Shocking, right? :P But they also had multiple ball pythons on reptile carpet, which ball pythons are solitary creatures, but...

My Petsmart on the other hand...well. Where do I begin? There's like 6 ferrets in a glass cage big enough for maybe two. Guinea pigs & chinchillas have too small enclosures. Actually, they all have too small of enclosures. The ball pythons are waay too skinny. Housed together, of course. The leopard geckos -- oh dear. There had to have been at least 10 in a 5 gallon. All different sizes which, when housing leopard geckos, they have to be the same size. Housed on sand. I though a couple of them were dead, thank god they were breathing lol.

That's what i remember from the last time I was there. Maybe it got better.

I have two Petco's and three PetSmarts within 20 mins driving distance of my house, and in Texas that is considered very close. I am not fond of either of them. Hands down the PetSmarts are in better condition and take much better care of their animals, but I have no respect for either. Each one sells red tail boas, and one even had a burmese python for sale once. The cards on the display cases describing the red tails said they maxed out at 5-6 feet! It also said they could be kept in 40 gallon aquariums when they were full grown! I was shocked, and proceeded to demand a manager address the issue. This is why there are so many large snakes being abandoned, because of irresponsible pet stores giving out false information simply to make a quick buck! I don't buy from pet stores. Period.