Exotic Pets — Attraction in Wichita

My husband & I love fish & spend big money on them whenever we go to Wichita to shop for fish...Unfortunately they have a crazy no fish on Wednesday rule regardless of circumstances. My husband works every day but Wednesday & we live over 2hrs from Wichita...I even called & attempted to explain this to them, to no avail. They will not accommodate us. So we called a few other stores & found 1 other store that was actually closed on Wednesday, however they came in to work on their day off & opened up the store in order to allow us to shop for fish in their store...In total we spent roughly $260-$270 just on fish, food/feeders & some new fish equipment/heaters/filters/& a couple small tanks for quarantine tanks...We get the whole "let the fish rest after being delivered" theory cuz we've been fish hobbyist's for over a decade so we understand how stress is not good for fish. So we get the theory from a fish hobbyist's point of view...That said, from a business standpoint, we're havin a hard time comprehending that move considering we didn't ask them, "we want to buy the fish you JUST received today & nothing else." We'd be happy & infact prefer to buy the fish that have been in the store for some time so they are less stressed if we purchased them as opposed to the recently delivered batch... If I were owner or manager in this store I'd keep the current policy except for, I'd have a separate small & private room JUST for the newly delivered fish to have a day or 2 to be acclimated & help lower their stress before being introduced to the store & it's customers. That way I could keep the entire store open during working hours so that customers like my husband & I can enjoy the same great experience all customers get to & mainly for the fact that I wouldn't be missing out on any potential to generate income....But I'm not the owner or manager so all I can do is offer a suggestion & continue spending our $ at other fish stores in Wichita unfortunately & continue to hope they can figure out a way that we can spend our money in their store someday & enjoy their fish inventory that we can only guess is very beautiful & impressive (since we have not even been able to see it in person as the room itself is even closed to any customer traffic) ....Extremely disappointed & saddened by...

We purchased $77.29 worth of fish, plants and shrimp on the 28th of November. We started a new tank and treated with Seachem Prime and Seachem Stability, Prime on the first day and Stability for seven days before we bought the fish on the 28th. We put only the items we purchased from Exotic Pets on the 28th in the tank. On the 7th of December we noticed that some of the fish had developed white bumps which we assumed were ich and we lost one fish. We took pictures and a water sample in on the 7th. The employee confirmed it was Ich and recommended to keep treating with Stability due to very slight nitrate and nitrite levels, but that everything else on the water test looked fine. He also recommended that we not treat with Ich medicine because it would kill the biofilter and make the nitrate and nitrite in the water rise. It's now the 15th and all the fish are dead from ich. We went in and talked to the manager, who said there was nothing they could do because they have no "live guarantee" and that they had that posted on the registers and around the store, as well as on the receipt. It's worth noting that when we bought everything, the cashier asked if we wanted the receipt and we said no so they tossed it. I looked at the registers on the way out and didn't see it posted anywhere but I didn't ask her to point it out. Her reasoning for denying a refund or store credit was that they cannot account for how the fish were transported or handled once they leave. I pointed out that they fish were sold to us with Ich, and they have several tanks under quarantine right now in the store including the one that we some of our fish came out of. She said they know they have diseases but that's why they keep those under quarantine. It's obvious we were sold fish with Ich before they started showing symptoms and they infected and killed the rest of the fish we bought that day and the shrimp as well. We would have been better off getting fish at Petco or PetSmart rather than trying to support a local business that sells diseased fish and doesn't stand behind...

Really disappointed with the experience I had here today. Long time customer of Aquatic Pets, and have been in there probably 4 times in the last 3 months, either buying supplies or just going to admire the setups and fish. Have been working on cycling a tank for over a month and finally was ready to buy fish today, we show up to Aquatic Pets aaaand they’re closed down. Okay, nobody’s fault, check Facebook to see they are moving back into Exotic Pets at this location. Fantastic news for me! We head down the street. I ask if they have the same deal on plant bundles that they did at the other store (6 bundles for $32.99), and the guy who worked at AP and transferred over said he wasn’t quite sure. (This man is amazing, by the way. Super knowledgeable and helpful every time. I don’t know his name, but he is fantastic.) The manager (?) scoffed and said somewhat rudely “no, we don’t do that here.” with no further explanation. Nobody’s fault but a kinder tone never killed anyone. Either way, bought some plants and a small school of tetras (6), along with some other odds and ends for the tank. I noticed one of the tetras was a little… floaty… when we got in the car. I figured it just had something with its swim bladder— not ideal but nothing we couldn’t handle. He was alive so I wasn’t too worried. But within 5 minutes of leaving, he was gone. Typically, I’m not one to turn around for something of that sort, but not only are these schooling fish, but they were fairly pricey for what they are. The immediate reaction was “oh, we’ll just refund that one.” I said “they’re a schooling fish and I don’t want to stress them out, could we just exchange?” We were told that he would have to find someone else, which took about 5 minutes. He came back and said they would exchange, which took another 10-15 minutes. We were standing up there long enough for another employee to ask if we were okay. I am well aware that sometimes stuff happens with the fish, but almost every part of our experience today seemed to be handled quite...