There’s one of those in this town that is amazing. Not only do they have a massive selection and a knowledgeable staff, it’s basically a tiny zoo. They used to have a mountain lion and an alligator (they died), but they still have macaws, cockatoos, a colony of degus, all kinds of turtles and lizards, etc. Not for sale, just to look at. And they encourage kids to come in and look around.
Sweet, there’s one sort of like that a town over from me, except the other animals are mostly available for adoption through local rescue groups. Most except the two macaws, owner rescued them 20+ years back and they bonded to him and each other so they stay and have free roam of the shop, and occasionally he’ll have a large reptile around that isn’t available, as a show and tell sort of setup. Importantly, since they are from rescue groups, they make sure adopters know what they are getting themselves into.
The other difference is they do almost exclusively marine, and their freshwater fish typically are sickly. (Still not as bad as big box, last time I got Rosie’s for a new breeding colony from petsmart, only 1 dozen of the 8 dozen survived more than a week, and the problem wasn’t the tank… so I don’t do that anymore). But they do know their shit, and they do have an amazing selection if you do marine.
The one I’m talking about does both. Marine is way too much work for me to ever take on. The only aquatic animal we have right now is my daughter’s betta, but I have had this idea for a while now to have a tank with a marimo moss ball and a bunch of different colored freshwater shrimp. Shrimp have always been my favorite aquatic animal to have as a pet. I used to have a bunch of ghost shrimp in a tank with some fancy guppies and some platys and a few snails and the ghost shrimp were my favorite part.
Marine is too much work for me as well. Too expensive as well, and I’m not a fan of having to figure out which fish were wild caught, since a huge proportion of marine fish available in the trade are wild caught. I’m not into depleting nature for my own amusement.
Shrimp are fantastic and easily my favorite thing to watch, beating out the variety of snails by just a touch. However most of the commonly available colored ones can interbreed so if you get like red and blue neocardinias (cherry/fire shrimp and blue dream/blue velvet shrimp respectively) you’ll end up with babies (maybe after a few generations, maybe after the first breeding cycle) that revert to normal brown/clear coloring.
This chart is a huge help because it really drills down which species of shrimp you can house without that problem. (Edit to change link to a better chart)
https://www.ukaps.org/forum/attachments/shrimp-crossbreeding-chart-jpg-jpg.146825/
Or if you don’t care about the offspring color intensity, you can get cull packs on Aquabid (like eBay, but aquatic stuff only) for decently cheap, and it’s usually a mixed selection of peach, blue, and cherry neos that don’t have the intense coloring the breeder wants. Super easy to care for, ready breeders, fun to watch, and you can have glass shrimp with them! (ghost/grass/glass).
Apologies for the walls of text here, this is one of my special interests 😅
