In a shopping experience in Wal-Mart I noticed something that broke my heart. Their aquarium section.
The betta fish are kept in tiny plastic cups with barely enough water. The employees do not care for these fish, so they go for days swimming in old food and excrement. More often than not they are stacked up on top of each other, which makes it harder for them to get air. The ammonia levels in the water from the waste is high enough to cause several painful and horrific diseases. Some even lose their fins!
Then you get to the tanks. A lot of the tanks run on the same filtration system. Which means if ONE fish gets sick, they all get sick! Wal-Mart doesn't seem to care about cleaning these tanks either. I have seen fish in there rotting away and at a high stage of decomp. This is not good for the live fish. They put the wrong types of fish with each other and a lot of them get injured pretty badly.
This is cruel and should not be tolerated anymore. I have complained but one voice isn't enough.
To those who tell me to 'do my research' that bettas lived in 'small areas' in the wild and are not uncomfortable in small containers.
This is not true. They lived in wide open rice paddies in Thailand. Plenty of space for multiple bettas to live amongst each other. I know that bettas can not reside in the same tank, but it doesn't mean they have to be kept in tiny cups with not enough water that is filthy! The cups are fine to keep them in till they are sold, but they should not be long term living quarters and should be changed every day or every other day!
(I keep and breed bettas, I assume that would know a good deal about them.)
