Are Fish Next??

esoxlucius

Balaclava Bot Butcher
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Dec 30, 2015
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In blighty when I was a kid you could go into a typical pet shop and puppies, kittens, rabbits, gerbils and hamsters were very common. Some had a very small section for fish, usually cold water though.

Nowadays it's all changed. There are very few small pet stores, just large stores such as Pets at home. Puppies and kittens stopped being sold years ago, and just recently when my son wanted a rabbit, I also discovered that rabbits are no longer allowed to be sold either! All that's on offer now are guinea pigs, rats, hamsters, gerbils and mice.

If you want a dog or a cat in the UK you either have to go to a kennels, a cattery or a rescue centre, and there are lots of each.

Whether these changes over the years eventually start to affect the smaller stuff too, like hamsters and gerbils etc I don't know. And obviously if all these animals are affected by various laws, then aquarium fish will more than likely be dragged into it too.

One thing is for sure though, the pet industry is huge, absolutely massive. I don't see any significant changes happening overnight.
 
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tlindsey

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Aug 6, 2011
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I'm surprised that puppy mills weren't shut down years ago. Most of them were awful and the people who operated the bad ones didn't care imo. There were too many puppies from mills that had health issues and dying early after customers purchased them. I know personally worked for a franchise named Petland and the owners were hit by many law suits and two brothers lost their business.
 

RyanScanner

Fire Eel
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Apr 24, 2024
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I'm surprised that puppy mills weren't shut down years ago. Most of them were awful and the people who operated the bad ones didn't care imo. There were too many puppies from mills that had health issues and dying early after customers purchased them. I know personally worked for a franchise named Petland and the owners were hit by many law suits and two brothers lost their business.
Maybe it will be good long term. Fish should be less disposable and more expensive I think.
 
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skjl47

Goliath Tigerfish
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May 16, 2011
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Hello; I almost wrote that the problem with the pet industry is the consumable product is a living thing. True enough to a degree as a complicating factor in the business model. Grocery stores deal with living things but do not have such a complication. Their living things are meant to be dead at the point of sale. This also generates a fast replacement market for product.
Puppy mills and even the aquarium fish business have the issues of getting a product to market at the lowest per unit price point. A fair number of threads already archived on this site about the supply side of fishkeeping hobby. Likely not best to encourage too close a look at collection, transport and breeding of commercial aquarium fish stocks if you wish to keep a warm & fuzzy feeling for the hobby.
 
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