I was in a pet store the other day looking for a dwarf pleco (Clown Plecos), anyway I took a look in the reptile section and they had a african fat tail. skinny little thing really, it had one hide no moss or anything else in there to keep the humididty up, and the substrate was pine shavings, and a little dish of water, and crickets in the cage with no calcium on them. it amazes me that these places have no idea about the care of reptiles in there own store. i took the little girl aside, and explained that I have one of these and that the oil in the pine shavings are poison to them, i then explained what a proper setup should look like.

now here is something I wonder about.....
why cant these places go onto a site like this and print out a care sheet, laminate the **** thing and put it near the cage, that way the poeple that were buying them would know what they were getting into, and the store staff (with little to no herp experience) could setup a proper container, and potentially save on stressed out reptiles that wont eat, and die in the store.

a **** laminated peice of paper, thats all it would take...

i explained this to the little girl in the store, and unfortunatly most of the pet stores care about the sale of the animal, not necesarily how long they live when you get them home. anyway the little girl's eyes glassed over, so I made the suggestion to the manager as well. calmly no irate customer here...(whom I suspect has no intention of looking up a care sheet)

i also suggested that any pet store that took the time to print out a care sheet, and provide it to its customers before purchase, would probably sell more reptiles than any other store in the city/area. i would certainly buy mine there.

What they are afraid of is, if they actually put up the things up it would discourage sales!
People would find out that there is actually work involved in keeping the animals properly and decide it was too much trouble.

__________________
Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

i suppose so... even still I would rather know what I was getting into...
maybe it would force the stores to get more beginner species instead. then customers can still come to a store and walk out with a reptile
then they can order in more difficult species on special request. because everyone knows after you get your first successful herp.... you cant wait to get more...lol (spider geckos for me ...)

I definitly know how you feel. I recently purchased a water dragon, the enclosure was a 20 gal aquarium, no uvb light one water dish and a Ceramic Heat Emitter only used at night. nothing to climb on. I asked the employee about what I needed and he plainly said all u need is what is there. i purchased the entire set up. only to find out later that I needed waaaaaaaaaaay more. In the mean time my dragon had stopped eating , was extremly inactive. he is now on the road to recovery. He has a 4x4x3 enclosure , a Ceramic Heat Emitter for heat 2 uvbs a swimming area. and tons of climbing branches. I just hope I got him b4 any permanent damage could be done

this is gonzo

speaking from experience of working about 6 years in a pet shop, some places do not know forums like this exist. i don't remember how I came upon this place anymore but i'm glad I did. my job at the pet store got me interested in reptiles so I wanted to find out about them. i joined here a few years into working at my job and as I see it, better late than never. i got better ideas on care for the reptiles in our store and though we could not always provide proper space, i had no control of what came in, i just did the best I could care wise which wasn't always perfect but it was better than previous conditions. i brushed up on my knowledge of the herps we had there as best as I could and answered customer questions with what I knew and with many herps that went home I offered this site as a place to go with further questioning.

but its also unfortunate that alot of places are just out to make the sales. many stores have the most beautiful enclosures for their herps but not know anything about them and the pretty enclosures could be wrongly set up. and some places could be providing the best they could even if its not completely right and know way more about the herps then the ones with pretty enclosures. if I had my way I would have turned that entire section around at our store, but I didn't so I did my best.

i understand where you're coming from, its very difficult when you see things like that. i was very frustrated with the way our store was run and only when I started to understand more about herps did I find out that many people who ran the store didn't know any better than things they were told by vendors they talked to on the phone.

sorry lol I kind of joined you on your rant. its very annoying.

__________________
Professional Pet Sitting/Dog Walking
http://niksscalesandtails.com/



yes i am a she ^_^

~My Babies~

1 Rosy Boa (male) Chaos
1 Snow Corn (male) Blizzard
1 Anertherystic Corn (male) Bullet
1 Senegal Parrot (male) Shadow
2 dogs (male) Spot (RIP) and Bear

gonzo... cool name for a cool lizard

dark magician... i dont blame the little girl "entirley", however now that you mention it I didnt give them any examples of a good care sheet site...like this one...lol I think ill stop in there on my way home from work...

you might as well give it a shot. someone there might find the place. they can either use it or decide to ignore it but at least you will be trying something helpful.

__________________
Professional Pet Sitting/Dog Walking
http://niksscalesandtails.com/



yes i am a she ^_^

~My Babies~

1 Rosy Boa (male) Chaos
1 Snow Corn (male) Blizzard
1 Anertherystic Corn (male) Bullet
1 Senegal Parrot (male) Shadow
2 dogs (male) Spot (RIP) and Bear

People in general like the idea of an exotic pet, but don't like the idea of taking care of it or spending a lot of money on it. How many of them do they sell a year, and really how many of them live more than four years after that? Not a whole lot.

The pet stores are right, sales would definitely go down once people started seeing that they actually need care. But then, I feel that a pet store is way different than, say, a hardware store. These are lives that must be maintained, not something expendable like a hammer. They have a responsibility that trumps making money.

I love your suggestion of getting more starter reptiles. I've seen the local pet pit sell anacondas and reticulated pythons to any joe off the street. Those animals grow way too large to be a beginner pet. Actually, just about the only things I haven't seen them carry are hots, and they don't know the first thing about taking care of any of them. It's a really sad state of affairs, and it makes me angry, but the only thing I can do is stop buying animals from pet stores and encourage others not to. I'd rather buy from breeders or adopt and have pet stores just sell supplies.

__________________
"Let's eat, Grandpa!"
"Let's eat Grandpa!"

Punctuation. It saves lives.

I can certainly attest that this happened to me. When I first bought a baby leo, my only prior exotic experience was taking care of a Russian tortoise for 4 years who, it turns out, is indestructible. I say that because, since becoming more knowledgeable about reptiles in general, I have learned what he actually needs, and he has a better life. Prior to that, he just lived however with no special care except a heat lamp and veggies.

So back to the leo, they told me NOTHING!!!!! They said he eats worms or fruit flies, and that we should keep him warm. Nothing about substrate, what 'warm' means, cohabitation with other species, humidity, nothing - nothing - nothing. So we let him live with the tortoise. To keep warm, he hid between the tortoise and the glass, right over the heating pad. Poor thing. They said he would be a good pet for my 6 year-old, who wanted to play with it. Well, she did. She put it in a wooden pyramid toy, it promptly got out, then was crushed behind a shelf when we were trying to find him. So, we got another one. This one died in two days in the tortoise habitat. I'm not sure why, but I could see some internal bleeding through his belly skin. Maybe got cutbably cut on the improper substrate (wood chips). But the pet store made $60 off of us for those two dead Leopard Geckos. And they never told us what went wrong, why they might have died. Never even discussed it with us.

However, they suggested that an adult AFT might do better with a kid. They said it needed daily sunlight, crickets, and a little fake tree. But this time I decided to disregard their advice and learn what to do myself (from you guys, actually), and things have gone MUCH better. But the pet store still made their $70 off us with no concern for helping us keep it alive for the long haul!

Well, I have since become much more knowledgeable. Knowing more has helped me identify those pet shop employees who do know something about reptiles.

Of course I'm ashamed to have let two Leopard Geckos die in my care. But I'm forgiving myself. Since then I've rehabbed a few, so maybe that makes up for it.

Jennifer

__________________
Leopard Geckos: Gravy & Noah
African Fat-tails: Mocha (gravid) & Csikos ('Striped')
Russian Tortoise: Dude
African Dwarf Frog: Anon
Firebelly Toads: anonymous (3)
Guinea Pigs (adult): Autumn, Butterscotch, Nudger
Guinea Pigs (juv.): Linda, Heidi, Scruffy
Netherlands Dwarf Rabbit: Kobe
Small Mouth Bass: Cupcake
Beta Fish: Indigo & Chelsae