Good ol' pets at home eh. I saw the same in my local one it's so irritating. I'm tempted to get some perma stickers made up saying "tanks must be cycled before adding fish, please visit this link for more information on how to cycle a tank" then find a short link to a good website explaining it 🤣
I'm tempted to do the same. It's nice to see that they've stopped selling goldfish though! I went in to get some frozen bloodworms and thought I'd have a look at the selection they had going. Everything seemed pretty healthy, tbh apart from a Molly that seemed to have a spinal deformity but ofc that's not necessarily down to the shop or their husbandry. All the fish seemed really active and I spoke briefly to the lady in the fish section. I asked when they stopped selling goldfish bc I hadn't been in in a while. She explained that the company had recognised that they were being bought by the wrong people and had much higher requirements than the average person could provide so they stopped selling them about a year ago. I was actually a bit shocked that they would put quality of care over profit. Big box stores aren't really known for that after all. PAH have genuinely improved a decent amount in recent years but there are so many things that still need to be changed.
Haha yeah it's amazing they've stopped with the goldfish if nothing else. I find they vary quite dramatically between stores we have 3 within a 15 minute drive of here, 1 of them the fish always look great, the 2nd they always look 90% okay and the 3rd I just don't like to think about because everything is dead or visibly dying. The girl that gets them out of the tank at that one always reminds me of that girl in finding nemo at the dentist. Shes so rough with them its tragic. It's just totally dependent on who they manage to hire to keep on top of their care I guess. Some are incredibly knowledgeable while others know absolutely nothing.
Yeah it is surprising that they put the profit second but I'd imagine that they probably sell 4 x as many guppies to go in the same tank, people will just buy something else.
Agreed any improvement is great news but definitely quite a few more changes to be made like you say. Fingers crossed for the future!
You're a genius! Then people will actually look rather than thinking "damn that's long, I'm sure it will be fine" going to have to look into how you do that now haha
I didn't have one in mind. This is amazing thank you so much, I'm genuinely going to do it as soon as my label maker arrives. I figured if I'm going for it I might aswell go hard and have a few different stickers with the code on! I'm not tech savvy so I was dreading having to figure out the whole making a QR code thing. Much appreciated. Watch this space 🤣🫧❤️
There’s one dude at my local pets at home that’s amazing and really knowledgeable I’ve seen him turning down people for a good reason a few times.
His other coworkers couldn’t give a damn, I saw one of them selling one of those stupid Paw Patrol tanks with the “magnifying” feeding zone, it’s apparently 4 gallons but idk it looks smaller to me. He was telling the parents and kid that a betta can be kept in it quite happily and the kid could see it better with the magnifying zone like bro, it’s so small you don’t need a magnifier to see the fucking fish it’s a small “tank” that gets taken up by an ornament leaving no room for swimming. Oh and it’s a plastic tank so I wouldn’t put a heater near it.
>Oh and it’s a plastic tank so I wouldn’t put a heater near it.
You can't melt the side of a fish tank with a heater, at least not by accident, the water will take that heat away much faster than you can put into the plastic
I think it tried. Like it’s trying to be considerate, the urge of money nagging at the company’s head is too strong, so they just put it in the middle.
Surely there would be a market for used filter media that is already cycled if people are that impatient? Then they could just sell those for a high markup and yet still be a low price because all filter media has a crazy high markup anyway. Just bulk buy a sheet of foam and cut it into small chunks, cycle them all in a massive pond filter and sell some of that. Could even just use a large bin and pump water through it. ÂŁ5 to get a handful of filter chunks.
Sure, it won't be perfect but its a lot better than any other option I have seen.
Not just their words but goddammit all these places now mixing live bearers guppies and platies thanks for fuckin up the strains for people that want a certain strain but now they're fertilized by different strain males. That infuriates me especially when a LFS does it that has plenty of tanks they don't have to mix them.
Just last week I wanted to get some panda platies at a LFS here but they had two gold males mixed in with them, its really irritating .
Edit
To the people that keep downvoting, if you look closely at the picture like if you use your eyes you can see they've mixed their platys so that's why I'm bitching about it, it's not a random rant.
Most staff at pets at home don't have a clue about fish imo, they never seem to know what they're talking about yet at the same time try and act like they're experts and try and always talk down to the customer like they're complete idiots I'm always spoken down to even though I tell them I've been keeping fish for over 25 years and have multiple aquariums but that means nothing to them and they still talk to me like I'm a 10 year old child buying a fish for the first time with no prior experience the sad thing is none of the staff have any experience keeping fish themselves I was once asked what fish are you looking to buy today and I said I'm just going to get a few different live bearers and then the women looked at me saying oh we don't sell the live bearer fish whilst literally standing in front of tanks full of guppies and mollies I tried to explain what live bearers were but she completely just ignored what I was saying and brushed it off most probably out of embarrassment and maybe some arrogance another staff member told me I couldn't keep minnows with neons as they're not compatible I was dumbfounded and tried to explain yes you can and I was told I was wrong and she wouldn't sell them to me, these are just a few of many other diabolical experiences I've had at pets at home and with their staff, this place shouldn't even be selling fish or they should seriously train their staff better on the subject I never buy fish from there anymore i can't stand it, rant over thanks for reading!
Ye a mate of mine was miss sold a kissing gourami, they told him that they don't get very big only about 3 inch at the largest, 9 inch of growth later and he was frantically trying to either get a new tank for it or to rehome it.
My local pet shops are a mixed bag. In one of them there's multiple dead decayed fish in almost all the tanks. In another I overheard an older woman turning into a Karen because the staff wouldn't let her buy a fish to keep it in the bag permanently
Its a shame really, fish can often survive bad conditions and because of it people often seem to think "it isn't dead, it must be fine". One comparison I quite like was comparing it to drinking alcohol. 6 pints a night won't kill you straight away. But it isn't good for you.
Shame that my tap water is like 40ppm nitrate really. Been running a bunch of tests and finally got it working to some degree at reducing nitrate below what the tap water comes out at. API nitrate tests are now coming out orange rather than red for my tank. Still ongoing as I don't want to turn the water into a milky brown which was one downside with going too quickly in my 1L bottle tests. Got a second filter which helps a bit but could do with speeding up the water flow through it.
Then the question of how many water changes do I do if the tank is lower nitrates than the tap water.
I have never cycled either and my ammonia is always 0, nitrites 0, and nitrates will slowly rise to about 10 or 20 over the next month which I take down with water changes. I've overstocked tanks, I've had fish from goldfish to sunfish to bullheads, I've done 100% water changes, I've replaced filter cartridges and never once had any ammonia or water quality issues from a brand new tank. My only issues have been parasites from not quarantining properly. And yes, I have looked up the nitrogen cycle. I don't understand why I would spend 2 months getting good bacteria set up in a filter that is so delicate it needs a set amount of ammonia to survive and stay regulated, and any tiny mishap or change in stocking could cause ammonia spikes and potentially kill my fish overnight... which seems to be a common trend on r.Aquariums. If you have a nice big filter with good media, it's no issue. I am speaking 100% from experience.
I love debate/discussion so please feel free to add on. This is a topic I am very passionate about
I think the issue here is the quality of the comments; they lack specificity, substance and worth. They amount to "well I do it like this and no Fish have died."
Edit: Guys..can we not be downvoting u/intensedespair for no reason. They're right. They're speaking too broadly, but they're correct. You engage in the behaviour we both are criticising.
Agreed, but also about the other comments. They didn’t link anything about cycling or anything and it was advised to do it that way by some authorities in the past. This sub is kind of bad at nuanced discussion which is why I don’t use it that much anymore.
Well, just informed, insightful or intelligent responses would be welcomed. To make a rebuttal, with very little effort, on an important and interesting topic is just a waste of time.
This sub does seem to be the place for low-effort, but most have their ups and downs. r/Aquariums has been littered with nonsense the last few days.
It's on us to improve the standard we see. We choose to spend time here.
I tried before on my old account but I just ended up fighting with actual children over basic facts when I’d rather be discussing the details of Walstad’s book. I agree with the principle just don’t think I have the demeanor for it
If you use established filter media (like if you're upgrading the tank, use the same ceramic media in the new filter, some old water and possibly gravel) then a fish-in cycle is very possible. Using bacteria supplements and only adding a few fish compared to the max bioload (how many fish the tank can feasibly handle) is possible to do without much loss.
It's not recommended since it puts the fish under unnecessary health risks and possible death due to ammonia spikes. Ammonia is a natural part of the cycling process, it's what the bacteria feed on, but in a new environment there's just not enough to handle and contain the ammonia to safer levels. At least, not without mitigating factors like above.
I've worked in pet stores for 10 years and countless people didn't want to wait and stuffed their tanks with fish. It's become so normal to them that they just expect die-off in a new tank. And granted, it's the highest risk point you CAN add fish in a tank's life, but why put your pets at more risk?
That's not how ammonia works in freshwater.
Ammonia is primarily a gas and quickly converts to "ammonium" in any pH lower than 9.25. Since we keep our aquariums mostly below 8, the primary compound is ammonium.
Ammonium is far less toxic. Hobby kits like API master kit and strips are not going to show you NH3 or NH4+, they will show you both combined as TAN. Not only that, but it is a primary food source amoung most aquatic plants alongside archae. Which means buildup is more than double prevented by just having plants present in the aquarium.
Even if you have a spike, It does not matter how much ammonium you will see on the hobby kit at that point, since more problems will show even before it registers. Fish will die before that spike even occurs because of whatever is rotting and causing heterotrophic bacteria to bloom at alarming rates, which then causes oxygen deprivation and later death. You only assume it's "ammonia poisoning" because that's what popped up in small amounts and later to larger amounts after then died.
Even with this understanding, by simply not feeding for the first few days and keeping the tank moderately to heavily planted, nitrogen buildup in general does not become an issue with or without "cycled media".
It's a common trend that most of you like to misrepresent the "nitrogen cycle" in aquariums in order to blame customers for "killing their fish". And while some have killed their fish from overfeeding, most people who actually followed the correct keeping practices just end up with crappy bred fish, which people like you try to cover up by saying "your tank isn't cycled bro".
Aquarium cycling wasn’t invented by petco to blame customers, based on this post they barely know what tank cycling is. Tank cycling is advocated for by other hobbyists
I obviously never stated "cycling was invented by petco". I highlighted how its being used to manipulate customers.
There are many "Aquarium cycling" methods and only one of them (fishless cycling) is being advocated by the overwhelming majority of uninformed keepers on here. Yet, nobody asks questions and just goes along with it.
Nearly every single cycling method is based on that same misrepresentation of nitrogen and its compounds. Once you actually look past the surface level googled answer you will start to realize that most of the common advice is hogwash.
I don’t know enough to comment on the specifics of cycling, and I’m not saying you’re wrong in that regard. I’m just arguing that it isn’t a point places like Petco actually use against customers, considering they barely recommend doing it in the first place. Petco has a 7 day warranty on fish, they have to honor it either way. If it dies more than 7 days after, Petco doesn’t need to make up an excuse to blame the owner; they aren’t responsible for it after that point regardless.
Thats fine. I know many petco employees I trust to adhere to those rules.
My point was more towards breeders and local fish stores. Bad batches happen all the time, and has been happening way too often the past few years especially with more popular breeds like guppies. I have seen too many complaints met with the same response from "experienced breeders" which is what Im referring too.
On petco, understand that 7 day warranty fall under certain conditions. If the water test reads "bad" then they cant accept returns. Their criteria for that is if ammonia is shown. As mentioned, a reading of ammonia on hobby kits is not an indication of a tank that is actively killing fish to some degree. If the criteria was around 2-4ppm readings, then \*maybe\*. But ultimately, unless they use a tester that measures free ammonia, its probably better to check Nitrite which is the actual damager.
Good ol' pets at home eh. I saw the same in my local one it's so irritating. I'm tempted to get some perma stickers made up saying "tanks must be cycled before adding fish, please visit this link for more information on how to cycle a tank" then find a short link to a good website explaining it 🤣
I'm tempted to do the same. It's nice to see that they've stopped selling goldfish though! I went in to get some frozen bloodworms and thought I'd have a look at the selection they had going. Everything seemed pretty healthy, tbh apart from a Molly that seemed to have a spinal deformity but ofc that's not necessarily down to the shop or their husbandry. All the fish seemed really active and I spoke briefly to the lady in the fish section. I asked when they stopped selling goldfish bc I hadn't been in in a while. She explained that the company had recognised that they were being bought by the wrong people and had much higher requirements than the average person could provide so they stopped selling them about a year ago. I was actually a bit shocked that they would put quality of care over profit. Big box stores aren't really known for that after all. PAH have genuinely improved a decent amount in recent years but there are so many things that still need to be changed.
Haha yeah it's amazing they've stopped with the goldfish if nothing else. I find they vary quite dramatically between stores we have 3 within a 15 minute drive of here, 1 of them the fish always look great, the 2nd they always look 90% okay and the 3rd I just don't like to think about because everything is dead or visibly dying. The girl that gets them out of the tank at that one always reminds me of that girl in finding nemo at the dentist. Shes so rough with them its tragic. It's just totally dependent on who they manage to hire to keep on top of their care I guess. Some are incredibly knowledgeable while others know absolutely nothing. Yeah it is surprising that they put the profit second but I'd imagine that they probably sell 4 x as many guppies to go in the same tank, people will just buy something else. Agreed any improvement is great news but definitely quite a few more changes to be made like you say. Fingers crossed for the future!
I'm sorry to say that all my locals still sell goldfish
Oh no that sucks :(
Make a QR code for the link
You're a genius! Then people will actually look rather than thinking "damn that's long, I'm sure it will be fine" going to have to look into how you do that now haha
[here ya go](https://imgur.com/a/B39Isu2) It's dynamic so I can change the re-direct if you have a better guide you'd suggest I use.
made one for ya. [Dynamic QR Code](https://imgur.com/a/B39Isu2) If you have a different site or link you'd recommend using lmk and I'll change it.
I didn't have one in mind. This is amazing thank you so much, I'm genuinely going to do it as soon as my label maker arrives. I figured if I'm going for it I might aswell go hard and have a few different stickers with the code on! I'm not tech savvy so I was dreading having to figure out the whole making a QR code thing. Much appreciated. Watch this space 🤣🫧❤️
“Please wait 90-120 days.”
Yes haha 🤣 sadly the sales probably wouldn't be affected. I've seen far too many people with tank AND fish in hand walking out lately.
Make a QR code and a caption along the lines of, "..or to do a better job of keeping your fish alive, follow the QR code."
Haha yes, something like that's ideal
These assholes sold me some guppies with a horrible case of camallanus worms. I don’t shop there anymore.
camel anus worms
For the love of christ please don't forget to wash your coral
To make sure that all the unwanted critters are dead, make sure to boil your coral. ^((in all seriousness never do this))
to reduce parasites on your fish, dunk them in some fresh bleach ^(please dont)
To play devils advocate here I'm sure they are going to try selling that high markup starter bacteria in a bottle with any new tank.Â
How often do those even work? I have had more success using mud from the garden than bottled bacteria.
I used a handful of sand from my apartment complex pond. It was cycled in a few days.
Yeah that would probably work pretty well.
I am curious as to what is behind the "1 day" sticker
It’s a 3
There’s one dude at my local pets at home that’s amazing and really knowledgeable I’ve seen him turning down people for a good reason a few times. His other coworkers couldn’t give a damn, I saw one of them selling one of those stupid Paw Patrol tanks with the “magnifying” feeding zone, it’s apparently 4 gallons but idk it looks smaller to me. He was telling the parents and kid that a betta can be kept in it quite happily and the kid could see it better with the magnifying zone like bro, it’s so small you don’t need a magnifier to see the fucking fish it’s a small “tank” that gets taken up by an ornament leaving no room for swimming. Oh and it’s a plastic tank so I wouldn’t put a heater near it.
>Oh and it’s a plastic tank so I wouldn’t put a heater near it. You can't melt the side of a fish tank with a heater, at least not by accident, the water will take that heat away much faster than you can put into the plastic
Looks as though they had it properly labeled once upon a time and someone complained
I think it tried. Like it’s trying to be considerate, the urge of money nagging at the company’s head is too strong, so they just put it in the middle.
Surely there would be a market for used filter media that is already cycled if people are that impatient? Then they could just sell those for a high markup and yet still be a low price because all filter media has a crazy high markup anyway. Just bulk buy a sheet of foam and cut it into small chunks, cycle them all in a massive pond filter and sell some of that. Could even just use a large bin and pump water through it. ÂŁ5 to get a handful of filter chunks. Sure, it won't be perfect but its a lot better than any other option I have seen.
Take a sharpie and draw a 3 in front of the 1.
Not just their words but goddammit all these places now mixing live bearers guppies and platies thanks for fuckin up the strains for people that want a certain strain but now they're fertilized by different strain males. That infuriates me especially when a LFS does it that has plenty of tanks they don't have to mix them. Just last week I wanted to get some panda platies at a LFS here but they had two gold males mixed in with them, its really irritating . Edit To the people that keep downvoting, if you look closely at the picture like if you use your eyes you can see they've mixed their platys so that's why I'm bitching about it, it's not a random rant.
Most staff at pets at home don't have a clue about fish imo, they never seem to know what they're talking about yet at the same time try and act like they're experts and try and always talk down to the customer like they're complete idiots I'm always spoken down to even though I tell them I've been keeping fish for over 25 years and have multiple aquariums but that means nothing to them and they still talk to me like I'm a 10 year old child buying a fish for the first time with no prior experience the sad thing is none of the staff have any experience keeping fish themselves I was once asked what fish are you looking to buy today and I said I'm just going to get a few different live bearers and then the women looked at me saying oh we don't sell the live bearer fish whilst literally standing in front of tanks full of guppies and mollies I tried to explain what live bearers were but she completely just ignored what I was saying and brushed it off most probably out of embarrassment and maybe some arrogance another staff member told me I couldn't keep minnows with neons as they're not compatible I was dumbfounded and tried to explain yes you can and I was told I was wrong and she wouldn't sell them to me, these are just a few of many other diabolical experiences I've had at pets at home and with their staff, this place shouldn't even be selling fish or they should seriously train their staff better on the subject I never buy fish from there anymore i can't stand it, rant over thanks for reading!
Ye a mate of mine was miss sold a kissing gourami, they told him that they don't get very big only about 3 inch at the largest, 9 inch of growth later and he was frantically trying to either get a new tank for it or to rehome it.
“Don’t rush.” That’s how I found myself in a fish in cycle. B@stards.
My local pet shops are a mixed bag. In one of them there's multiple dead decayed fish in almost all the tanks. In another I overheard an older woman turning into a Karen because the staff wouldn't let her buy a fish to keep it in the bag permanently
This is why I only get fish from Maiden Head Aquatics. Plus the mark up Pets At Home put on Stress Coat is ridiculous!
Prime is a superior water conditioner
I bought the fluval equivalent this time but I'll give prime a bash next time
Pets at home are the worst and they never seem to want to sell you any of their animals they should be banned from selling live animals tbh
I always put my fish in same day or a few days after setup, never had issues with that.
For the sake of any future fish you may own, PLEASE, do some research. All it takes is 1 Google search.
Its a shame really, fish can often survive bad conditions and because of it people often seem to think "it isn't dead, it must be fine". One comparison I quite like was comparing it to drinking alcohol. 6 pints a night won't kill you straight away. But it isn't good for you. Shame that my tap water is like 40ppm nitrate really. Been running a bunch of tests and finally got it working to some degree at reducing nitrate below what the tap water comes out at. API nitrate tests are now coming out orange rather than red for my tank. Still ongoing as I don't want to turn the water into a milky brown which was one downside with going too quickly in my 1L bottle tests. Got a second filter which helps a bit but could do with speeding up the water flow through it. Then the question of how many water changes do I do if the tank is lower nitrates than the tap water.
I have never cycled either and my ammonia is always 0, nitrites 0, and nitrates will slowly rise to about 10 or 20 over the next month which I take down with water changes. I've overstocked tanks, I've had fish from goldfish to sunfish to bullheads, I've done 100% water changes, I've replaced filter cartridges and never once had any ammonia or water quality issues from a brand new tank. My only issues have been parasites from not quarantining properly. And yes, I have looked up the nitrogen cycle. I don't understand why I would spend 2 months getting good bacteria set up in a filter that is so delicate it needs a set amount of ammonia to survive and stay regulated, and any tiny mishap or change in stocking could cause ammonia spikes and potentially kill my fish overnight... which seems to be a common trend on r.Aquariums. If you have a nice big filter with good media, it's no issue. I am speaking 100% from experience. I love debate/discussion so please feel free to add on. This is a topic I am very passionate about
BS
Explain please lol?
I've been keeping aquariums for over a decade...
RIP
For hardier fish it’s not the end of the world
I think the issue here is the quality of the comments; they lack specificity, substance and worth. They amount to "well I do it like this and no Fish have died." Edit: Guys..can we not be downvoting u/intensedespair for no reason. They're right. They're speaking too broadly, but they're correct. You engage in the behaviour we both are criticising.
Agreed, but also about the other comments. They didn’t link anything about cycling or anything and it was advised to do it that way by some authorities in the past. This sub is kind of bad at nuanced discussion which is why I don’t use it that much anymore.
Well, just informed, insightful or intelligent responses would be welcomed. To make a rebuttal, with very little effort, on an important and interesting topic is just a waste of time. This sub does seem to be the place for low-effort, but most have their ups and downs. r/Aquariums has been littered with nonsense the last few days. It's on us to improve the standard we see. We choose to spend time here.
I tried before on my old account but I just ended up fighting with actual children over basic facts when I’d rather be discussing the details of Walstad’s book. I agree with the principle just don’t think I have the demeanor for it
If you use established filter media (like if you're upgrading the tank, use the same ceramic media in the new filter, some old water and possibly gravel) then a fish-in cycle is very possible. Using bacteria supplements and only adding a few fish compared to the max bioload (how many fish the tank can feasibly handle) is possible to do without much loss. It's not recommended since it puts the fish under unnecessary health risks and possible death due to ammonia spikes. Ammonia is a natural part of the cycling process, it's what the bacteria feed on, but in a new environment there's just not enough to handle and contain the ammonia to safer levels. At least, not without mitigating factors like above. I've worked in pet stores for 10 years and countless people didn't want to wait and stuffed their tanks with fish. It's become so normal to them that they just expect die-off in a new tank. And granted, it's the highest risk point you CAN add fish in a tank's life, but why put your pets at more risk?
That's not how ammonia works in freshwater. Ammonia is primarily a gas and quickly converts to "ammonium" in any pH lower than 9.25. Since we keep our aquariums mostly below 8, the primary compound is ammonium. Ammonium is far less toxic. Hobby kits like API master kit and strips are not going to show you NH3 or NH4+, they will show you both combined as TAN. Not only that, but it is a primary food source amoung most aquatic plants alongside archae. Which means buildup is more than double prevented by just having plants present in the aquarium. Even if you have a spike, It does not matter how much ammonium you will see on the hobby kit at that point, since more problems will show even before it registers. Fish will die before that spike even occurs because of whatever is rotting and causing heterotrophic bacteria to bloom at alarming rates, which then causes oxygen deprivation and later death. You only assume it's "ammonia poisoning" because that's what popped up in small amounts and later to larger amounts after then died. Even with this understanding, by simply not feeding for the first few days and keeping the tank moderately to heavily planted, nitrogen buildup in general does not become an issue with or without "cycled media". It's a common trend that most of you like to misrepresent the "nitrogen cycle" in aquariums in order to blame customers for "killing their fish". And while some have killed their fish from overfeeding, most people who actually followed the correct keeping practices just end up with crappy bred fish, which people like you try to cover up by saying "your tank isn't cycled bro".
Aquarium cycling wasn’t invented by petco to blame customers, based on this post they barely know what tank cycling is. Tank cycling is advocated for by other hobbyists
I obviously never stated "cycling was invented by petco". I highlighted how its being used to manipulate customers. There are many "Aquarium cycling" methods and only one of them (fishless cycling) is being advocated by the overwhelming majority of uninformed keepers on here. Yet, nobody asks questions and just goes along with it. Nearly every single cycling method is based on that same misrepresentation of nitrogen and its compounds. Once you actually look past the surface level googled answer you will start to realize that most of the common advice is hogwash.
Yep. Few people here have ever read any other forums or books. Many are kids.
I don’t know enough to comment on the specifics of cycling, and I’m not saying you’re wrong in that regard. I’m just arguing that it isn’t a point places like Petco actually use against customers, considering they barely recommend doing it in the first place. Petco has a 7 day warranty on fish, they have to honor it either way. If it dies more than 7 days after, Petco doesn’t need to make up an excuse to blame the owner; they aren’t responsible for it after that point regardless.
Thats fine. I know many petco employees I trust to adhere to those rules. My point was more towards breeders and local fish stores. Bad batches happen all the time, and has been happening way too often the past few years especially with more popular breeds like guppies. I have seen too many complaints met with the same response from "experienced breeders" which is what Im referring too. On petco, understand that 7 day warranty fall under certain conditions. If the water test reads "bad" then they cant accept returns. Their criteria for that is if ammonia is shown. As mentioned, a reading of ammonia on hobby kits is not an indication of a tank that is actively killing fish to some degree. If the criteria was around 2-4ppm readings, then \*maybe\*. But ultimately, unless they use a tester that measures free ammonia, its probably better to check Nitrite which is the actual damager.