I am getting a betta, couple red wag platies and and a couple albino corydoras. Are they good quality from petsmart or petco? Petco seems to have better fish choices, while Petsmart sticks with the bread and butter species.

Understanding the Context

Petsmart also pushes their cheap branded aquariums over selling other manufacturers' aquariums. In short, I like Petco better. I've heard lots of bad fish stories concerning PetCo and PetSmart. What is the average condition of the fish that you've gotten from PetCo or PetSmart?

Key Insights

In my opinion you're asking the wrong question. Instead of asking "Should I get a dwarf gourami from Petsmart?" you should be asking "Should I get a dwarf gourami?" They're plagued with health issues, and are often aggressive to tank mates when they mature. However, if you still want one then as the others indicated above they all come from the same sources so it boils down to the individual ... Is buying fish from Petsmart a good idea or not, I don't really have a LFS within an hour of me so I would like to know if the fish are fine, especially with the policy. My petsmart is the place that didn't pay attention to community alerts and killed off their fish department with the city doing flush outs of the pipes and sanitization, then it was 2 months before they got new fish from their supply chain.

Final Thoughts

My petsmart has awful looking tanks, I am scared to buy fish from there for fear of some random bacterial or fungal infection blossoming post purchase. Hello all. I am currently planting a 5gallon betta tank, and came across petsmarts tube plants. I only do tissue culture plants because I don't want pests. I didn't realize they sold them, and after looking at reviews the consensus is mixed. Some even say they got snails from the tissue culture...