There is, sadly, such a thing as the pity market.
Pet stores run on impulse purchases.
They do not care why the animals were paid for, only that they were paid for.
There are written records of a pet shop owner buying sick or injured budgies cheap from their shitty breeders, clipping their wings, and dumping them in a nearby park to make bank off the flood of people who would find them and rush to the nearest store for supplies.
Selling betta in those little cups is calculated.
Stores can buy three or four times as many as there would have been space for if they were housed in tanks.
Fanciers will buy the pretty, charismatic ones when they first come in.
Concerned good Samaritans will buy the sick ones who've been there a few weeks, and some times spend lavishly for the supplies.
In the long run, not only do the stores take no loss for having fish in unchanged cups long enough for them to sicken, they are more likely to make MORE money on sick than healthy fish because they can literally bank on people buying them out of concern for their wellbeing.
This makes them very unlikely to stop.
The reason most pet shops don't sell puppies and kittens anymore is that there came to be serious backlash for any place selling them in poor condition.
The general public is beginning to care about birds, herps, and pocket pets enough to complain and drag the establishment's reputation instead of buying one to save it from the bad conditions.
By only buying animals that are healthy and complaining and warning other potential customers away instead of snatching up a sick one, consumers set and enforce dire consequences for the establishment's poor maintenance of their livestock.
Unfortunately, the general public doesn't care that much about fish that aren't super expensive.
But the precedent has been set for how to change this in other species: hit their seller in the wallet hard enough, and negligent practice will change.
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