We "won" a goldfish at the fair recently (I know, I know...) - on the way home I popped into Pets At Home and asked for a tank suitable for a single goldfish, and was sold a tank for £40.
The fish died on the way home! Next day I went back to Pets At Home to buy a new goldfish - the sales advisor asked me what tank I had, and when I told him he refused to sell me a goldfish as "that tank is too small"!!

Pets at Home featured on Watchdog this week - primarily for their poor care of fish and poor advice to buyers!!

Pets at home have tried (at least cosmetically) to be a bit more responsible when selling fish. But from my experiance that doesn't seem to go much beyond literally ticking boxes on a form. Its rare any of the staff have any practical knowledge about fish and their needs - but given their ages its not surprising. I use PAH for buying food (more for my cat than the fish) but for buying anything else I go to specialist outlets.

By the way I'm very much against keeping goldfish in tanks, they need a lot of room and really thrive best in a pond. The only exception would be the 'fancy' types but I'd never have one of those as imho they are cruel mutants - would you be happy buying a dog that had been deliberately bred so it could only shuffle about on the floor and can only look up?

Have often wondered about the morality of keeping fish in tanks. There again I'm against keeping pets in cages and hutches too - unless they get a lot of 'out time'.
Not sure I buy the usual argument - which is that these creatures have been bred for that environment so 'don't know any better'.

i bought fish from pets at home and as it was a new tank had to take in water samples to prove the water was the right ph before they would sell me the fish

IME it's not unusual to get conflicting advice in Pets at Home. Often the advice is just plain bad as well.

On the upside, all of the pets I've bought from there have been healthy and all lived to ripe old ages.

Fish have very different lifestyles depending on the species. Some of them will live naturally in very confined spaces. E.g. killifish may live out their lives in a puddle made by an elephant's footprint. Some fish will live their lives defending a small hole in a piece of rock.

For these types of fish, a good sized tank may even be a less constrained environment than what they'd experience in nature.

BTW: Goldfish should, if allowed to, grow a foot long and need a lot of water. They are not suitable for small bowls and even medium sized tanks.

We went into Pets at home told them one of the rabbits drinking water bottles was empty they said oh well there is another one in there! One drinking bottle for 5 rabbits.

It always makes my husband upset, as an ex snake owner , that the snakes in Pets at Home are kept in such tiny spaces and don't have room to properly uncoil themselves. He says they even look miserable.

I got 2 gerbils from there 2 years ago, well we baught 1 at first I wanted them both but my partner didnt want the other because it was albino, they didnt tell us that we should have 2 and they said we could hold them the next day so we held pesh thats what we called her and she bit my partner so while he was at work I went in to get the albino gerbil and now the albino called lucky is now my partner s favourite sadley pesh died from abdominal tumor 2 month ago pets at home shouldnt of sold us just 1 and should of gave us more information, and to the thread about snakes I felt so sorry for them aswell they in small dark boxes and the crickets and beetles are trapped in small boxes for snake food , they need better environment for snakes , and they need to check more into people before they sell them the pet because some people go in to buy gerbils and hamsters to feed to there pet which is horrible

i have bought 2 baby guinea pigs from PAH no problems with them one is 3 and the other is 4 both female. they live indoors, but not cheap to keep in food and hay. so if thinking of buying one of these lovely social animals, please be aware they cost a lot to keep. and maintain. of course their love in return is unconditional.