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Petsmart has cardinal, jumbo neon and red long fin tetra and one or two others for a dollar a piece. Just have to have a free pets perk card.

and medication

Figured that was a given

wow a store with ich........................

We all know buying any fish from a chain store runs a risk of illness, so not sure what the surprise is. I picked up a few serpae long fin, placed them in a treated quarantine tank like anyone should. No ich or loss of fish once introduced to my main tank. I am an avid supporter of LFS's 90% of my fish and a higher % of my plants came from exotic tropicals now noahs ark. However I also operate on a pretty small budget and was passing along a pretty decent deal I ran across. ultimately its the buyers decision.

I have had just as many bad experiences with big chain stores as I have had with locally owned stores.
The fish hobby has always been and will always be a buyer beware hobby.

Kevin

What I was trying to say by " wow a store with ich" was that as aquarium owners we should be preparedto deal with illness from ANY store. Because all stores get/have fish with problems and I have never found a store with out illnesses. We just should not exclude any store from the list.
Stores can't he'll it when the get 100s of fish from distributors every few weeks one is bound to infect tank. We should just be prepared when we buy ANY fish!

I know that stores work very hard to keep dead and dieing fish out of sight. I remember Ted commented in one of his video blogs about a fish store he had just visited not having a single sick fish in any tanks. I personally would rather the fish stay in there so that I can see what is going on with that tank. I am not saying leave a dead fish floating in a tank, but if you are having trouble with a group of fish, don't try to hide it. I remember stores that used to mark whole tanks full of fish as sick and not for sale. I even had a store that knew me pretty well call me at home a couple days after I picked up some dwarf cichlids to tell me tha the same tank had broken out in ich that day, now that is customer service.

Kevin

I've always been set against buying at the big box stores in support of the LFS. The problem is that it has become very difficult to find any kind of selection of bread and butter species at the LFS. If I'm looking for a variety of tetras the only place I'm going to get a good selection is at Petsmart. I still wouldn't buy my supplies there but the fish selection is much better quality than it used to be.
Michael

Agreed. It is, of course, one goal of the club to promote and support the LOCAL fish stores, but it is also important to remember that not all members can afford to buy fish at LFS prices if a big box store is selling them at $1/each.

All the fish I currently have were bought at the former Exotics or at NWAAS and HAAS auctions.