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Generally speaking, fish from Walmart are low quality to begin with. Then they're poorly cared for and poorly handled. And as with any fish from a pet store with obviously bad water quality, you run the risk of introducing diseases and/or parasites along with fish from such places. Particularly ich.
That said, If I happened to be at a walmart and they were selling a fish I wanted, I wouldn't necessarily rule it out. But certain precautions are in order.
Now, everybody's going to disagree with me here because this contradicts standard advice... but here goes: don't acclimate your fish, particularly if they're from a place with iffy water quality! Don't do it. You don't want yo slowly mix the water in the bag... because you don't want that water in your tank. Here's what I do:
I take some water from my aquarium and put it in a container. Then dump *all* the petstore water out of the bag, and put just the fish into that container. And I leave them in there for 20 min or so. Then dump all that water and put the fish only into my tank. This minimizes any germs/parasites/protozoa that you're introducing from the pet store. I've kept fish for many years and this has never been a problem.
This is particularly important if your tank hasn't been set up very long. An relatively new tank is far more susceptible to nasties from the pet store. Older tanks have enough microbe diversity built up that that ich, fungus, and such are rarely a problem.
Also helps to keep the water warm. Don't overfeed. Change the water, but not too often. Also you can change the water or you can clean/replace the filter... but only do one or the other. Never do both at the same time.
Do you put the bag of water into your tank ? Thats where the problem would lie. I put the bag in the water to bring it down/up to the temperature of my tank and add tank water to the bag bit by bit. But when it comes to putting the fish in the tank I use a net over the close by sink to get the fish out of the bag and into the tank. Never in a million years would I put any big box store water or even LFS water in me tank.
Depends what kind of fish. Something exotic, ornamental and pricey - no. But the common ones, maybe. I had a goldfish from them that lived 14 years. Co-workers killed it when I was on vacation ( over or underfeed). I also had a pair of betas that lived over 5 years. Also from Wal-Mart.
Just look at the tanks - if clean and no dead fish floating then you're probably ok. Observe if fish are swimming slowly or with clamped or frayed fins, gasping at the surface, drifting at the bottom, bloated, listless, not eating, has spots on fins and body, or enlarged eyes, looks dull, scratches their body on plants ...
Wal-Mart offers return on fish that die during the first few days after purchase.
I worked at Walmart and the tanks were DISGUSTING. So I cleaned them up and got everything running well (was part time) and then when I left they went to hell again. They spent like 20k on new tanks only to take them down a year later because people complained because it was 80% dead and sick fish.
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