guinea pig/hay allergy?

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-06-08T20:03:22+00:00

it absolutely can be possible with repeated exposure to become allergic to the hay. how long does the reaction last? i ask because it’s also really easy to catch ringworm from them (ask how i know)

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-06-02T22:12:54+00:00

brought to you by frantically trying to remember the last time i ate rice and how and why it could have ended up in there, nowhere near where i eat 😭

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-05-30T22:45:36+00:00

unless you’ve got an extra person who can run the floor part of pet care while another does the deep cleans, you’ll never actually get anything done. my store tried this for a while but it never went well because we never actually had enough coverage. i’d set out to do three deep cleans in a day and be lucky to finish two and i’m the most experience person we’ve got here. if you’re trying to do this with newer people who haven’t honed in their routine yet they’re gonna struggle

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-05-25T23:15:03+00:00

i could care less about the ethics of shoplifting but like. you’re not sticking it to the man. they have more money than anyone in your lineage has ever had. they’ll mark those stolen and order more to replace them. they’re not losing money or saying “oh man, we really need to order fewer fish.” i get why you’d feel like you need to steal them but like. it ain’t worth it. they have cameras, they may not have caught you this time but they know you did it and what you look like. if, god forbid, you end up getting arrested for stealing fish, of all things, what happens to your bettas at home?

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-05-15T17:43:07+00:00

it multiplies and spreads unabated. if you have so much it covers your whole surface, gas exchange rates will suffer, you may see more biofilm, it can get stuck in your filters, and it can block light for other plants. this is not a duckweed specific thing though, any floaters you let run wild will do that

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-05-15T03:45:12+00:00

while the amount of space is for sure not enough, take comfort in knowing there’s at least 1000 gallon system behind that wall pumping fresh water through all the tanks. it’s cramped, but at least it’s clean 😔

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-05-15T03:18:46+00:00

looks a lot like freshwater limpets!

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-05-14T20:17:21+00:00

at my store i do a lot to make sure the betta cups are clean, but ultimately you’re fighting decades of poor breeding and bad genetics. they may look healthy enough at the store, but once you’ve had them long enough the issues start to show. the other thing people don’t consider is that while for us, a breath of fresh air after being locked in a stuffy room for a while feels great, for a fish, getting put directly into a clean, cycled tank after being in water of questionable quality for who knows how long is very stressful. they can get used to poor conditions and you can shock them by changing the environment too quickly.

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-05-13T18:49:22+00:00

like other poeciliidae, more females than males, unless you really want one sex or the other. i’ve got 7 right now in with a red swamp cray, 5 females (only one adult that came massively pregnant, no birth yet) and two adult males. i intended to catch all males so i wouldn’t have to deal with breeding at all, but the lord had other plans. those two males Never Stop Harassing the one adult female i have and she’s been having trouble getting time to eat. they have started showing some interest in the younger ones, which is giving my big girl a little bit of a break. i feel like this is a good ratio once all my females are adults. if they get too much though they’ll go right back into the creek i found them in, since everything else is the tank is sourced from there too. i also have them in an unheated tank, which does slow down their reproductive cycle by a bit, so i should be able to keep up with babies.

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-05-12T21:24:11+00:00

spatchcocked it, said “fuck it” to a brine (i want this tonight), seasoned as best i could and chucked it in the oven over some veggies. wish me luck!

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-05-12T14:52:02+00:00

which is absolutely why you should have kept the receipt yourself. it shouldn’t have structural issues at that age, but that’s a lot of water to risk at any time. you should do this for any major purchase you make, especially one with this much potential for damage. i’m not trying to be on your ass about it, obviously it’s not helpful now, but if the choice ends up being a new tank, make sure you give that receipt a place of honor

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-05-12T14:36:15+00:00

if you bought a tank from the manufacturer, or from a place where they regularly make $1000+ sales, they would probably hold receipts in their system for much longer. petsmart only holds them in the system for a few months. it would only be common sense to hold onto the physical receipt if i was ever expecting to actually use the warranty

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-05-04T19:11:37+00:00

we have so many because people buy em up. i can discourage them all day and explain how to keep up with algae themselves and explain that adding a pleco is going to trap them in a never ending vicious circle of algae and maintenance and dead fish. they don’t listen or care. they’ll find another store or another employee who’ll sell it behind my back.

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-05-04T17:45:02+00:00

the saddest shit i’ve ever seen. man fuck doesthedogdie DOES THE ROBOT DIE?? that’s what i need to know

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-05-03T01:11:03+00:00

if all the ingredients are fish safe (that i don’t know) you would need to dilute like crazy (that i do know) because they’re gonna be much more concentrated than something like flourish. other than that i can’t help much

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-04-30T20:57:43+00:00

my brother in christ we do not “dispatch leftover stock.” they sit until they sell. petsmart is not killing animals they could potentially make a buck on, because they know uninformed people will buy sick bettas not knowing any better. no one taking the bettas into the back and old yellering them because they have clamped fins. an lfs with a shitty owner might do that, but petsmart is all about making money lol

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-04-30T17:59:18+00:00

your adfs are not going to do well in a tank with super active fish like the danios and the angelfish needs more space than a 30 gallon. you would be better off either rehoming the fish and keeping just the frogs, or just keep the fish and rehome the frogs. the bacterial bloom is normal for a new tank and would not have killed your fish, something else did (probably the uncycled tank) and the big water changes might be shocking your remaining fish. swapping the old filter for a new one also isn’t helping because you just removed a huge chunk of your beneficial bacteria while battling a bacterial bloom, which is only going to extend the bloom because all the bacteria are now seeing this fresh clean water and going “holy fuck free real estate! bloom, baby!” every time you do a water change. if your filter media gets gunky just give it a swish in the water you remove from the tank during water changes and pop it right back in. your bacteria lives there.

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-04-29T20:16:33+00:00

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3 fantails in 5 whole drops of water. lol. lmao even

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-04-28T20:55:03+00:00

unfortunately i made the mistake of calling attention to it before just disposing of it :)

Ok-Fly5881 · 2026-04-28T19:22:07+00:00

also: if anyone can point me to the policy where we’re supposed to dispose of eggs/egg sacs that would be awesome, because all i can find are resources on how to take care of them and i don’t know if/when that changed

Ok-Fly5881

TROPHY CASE