Do you have problems with your pets or other animals trying to eat this. I guess I am also trying to imagine why a store would keep a bag of dead fish. What am I not understanding?

Anna - If you bury the fish deep enough (under the plant, so we're talking at least 6"), it shouldn't smell. And cats/dogs will dig up your yard if you put down almost any kind of fertilizer, I've found.. or maybe it's the type I use (I use all kinds, but I prefer fish types of fertilizers). That's another reason why I use so much mulch.

Big box pet stores (Petco / Petsmart) have to have a record of their dead fish because they get fish in such HUGE numbers. When they get their feeder gold fish, they get them in the 1000s. Literally thousands. Trust me, I know! I worked both! And when you stick 2500+ fish in a 90gal aquarium, you're gonna have a LOT of dead fish every day, just from the sheer amount of ammonia they produce. So they have to pull the dead, count them, then put them in the freezer because you don't want to just throw a bag of dead fish in the dumpster.. that'll attract all kinds of vermin (stray cats / birds / rats). So they store dead fish in the freezer for a week or so, then put them in a thick garbage bag the night before the dumpster's emptied & then it goes away the next day.

At least at the Petcos & Petsmarts here that's how it's done. And that's what the rules were...

Where I live, this would most certainly attract coyotes and black bear.

Oh, that's depressing...poor fish! Once my grown daughter talked me into disposing of a living goldfish. I let it go in a creek. I guess that's better than being flushed down the toilet, which is what they would have done if I hadn't taken it.

Thanks for clarifying.

My larger houseplants are my fishy cemetery, but I only get a dead one once in awhile from my aquarium. I also water the plants with the used aquarium water when I do my partial water changes.

LindaTX8 said:Oh, that's depressing...poor fish! Once my grown daughter talked me into disposing of a living goldfish. I let it go in a creek. I guess that's better than being flushed down the toilet, which is what they would have done if I hadn't taken it.

https://nas.er.usgs.gov/taxgro...

If you need to dispose of a fish, please don't release it into the wild. Put it in a baggie & put it in the freezer. It will be dead within 5-10 seconds and it's painless. Basically fish goes into hypothermia and passes on almost instantaneously.

Well, I don't really believe people should keep fish as a pet, but I did what I was asked to do at the time. I think the big-box pet stores are irresponsible to condemn an unbelievable amount of fish to death from their own waste (couldn't be a pleasant way to go), so what they do is worse.

I'm not try to get down on anyone here, but the the effects of introducing alien species to a new range can be catastrophic!