I thought the same until I went to the crunchy little indie stores. I've gone to two different ones, and both were great! One was high end boutique, the other a crunchy 70s place where everyone seemed super knowledgeable and appeared to do it for a hobby, with the store simply funding their addiction hobby. :)

I still skip petco, though, that place bums me out.

There's a third indie place about an hour away that looks really cool too! They have a 1,500 gallon tank that I wanna see.