Be Careful Where You Buy

[Sjeckell]

A warning to fellow fresh water keepers - if you are thinking of buying from an online seller be very careful. Read everything twice!

I recently bought some fish (Siamese Algae Eaters) from *****************.

I should have paid more attention. All of their pictures show large heathy fish (of course). I didn't pay attention to the description that mentioned that the fish are one inch. Stupid me I paid the $22.75 in shipping charges to get tiny little fish the size of pins.

As I told ***************** my local aquarium store doesn't even carry fish tis small! (maybe the feeder fish) Let's fce it these are relativly inexpensive fresh water fish. The cost to ***************** to sell reasonanle sized fish could only be 5o cents or so. Why they would even sell 1" fish is beyond me.

The plants I purchase are incredibly small as well.

I'm a fool but I won't get burned twice - don't you either.

If you are going to pay that big fat shipping premium that comes with an online purchase of live stock. make sure who you are dealing with!!:mad:

[ChilDawg]

That is a good reminder, sjeckell. Unfortunately, we must look very carefully to see if the fish which we are purchasing online are what we think they are...be warned also about the clause where a dealer may substitute similar fish at their discretion! Thanks for sharing, and it is a "shame on them" in my book.

[dbcb314]

Do you know how much 50 cents is? If you can save 50 cents per fish or per sale, you just made your company tons of money. It sounds like good business to me, and it really is not the places fault, you did not look at the desciption.

They sell small fish to save money. If they can sell the fish before they have to give it an abundance of food, once again they just saved money.

And why would you ever pay 22+ dollars for a SAE? They are dirt cheap.

[ChilDawg]

Originally posted by dbcb314
And why would you ever pay 22+ dollars for a SAE? They are dirt cheap.

I think he paid that much to ship a group of them...

[Tim Bo]

We live and we learn :)

[Tim Bo]

Anybody else notice how fast those replies came...? When I first got to this post there weren't any replies and I don't consider myself slow on my keyboard!

[mrk442]

One thing to remeber is SAE's really mow down the algea when they are young they start to lose intrest alittle as they get older so getting them small is the may most people want them. "including me"


Just my 0.02
Matt

[stik6shift98]

that sucks sorry to hear that

[andruboz]

i had an explosive growth problem of hair algea on a sword plant. had a 5" c.a.e. in there and he wouldnt touch it. moved him out and moved 2 other 4" c.a.e.'s in and they hoovered the stuff down.

they started playing tag so they havent eradicated it completely off the plant. perhaps they will allow it to grow back so they can mow it down again. algea farmers? maybe they are smarter than we think.

oops. this thread is about caution when buying. yeah i agree with that too. i am trying to figure out if i just got hoodwinked by an aquabidder. i must take his word that the money order hasnt made it there yet. but i have my doubts.

[caz]

i dont think that was a very nice welcome to the forum for Sjeckell
:(

[ChilDawg]

Hopefully sjeckell stays in spite of that! Welcome to Aquaria Central...we are a little rough around the edges sometimes, but most of us are nice people if you give us a chance! :)

[ArkyLady]

I've bought fish from ***************** before and I was happy with them. The $22.75 shipping is pretty standard to have any small package shipped overnite, fish or not.

I don't see how you can blame ***************** for selling you exactly what they advertised and charging you a reasonable shipping fee. You didn't mention anything about the fish arriving dead or anything, so I'm assuming they were healthy? If the only complaint is the 1" size, they'll grow in your tank too :)

EDIT: I thought I'd add some more about my experience with *****************:

First, I placed the order on their website, then after receiving some additional stocking advice here, I decided to change my order. So I called their customer service # and the person on the phone was very helpful and patient with me making some rather drastic changes to my order. I ended up ordering 16 neon tetras, 16 glowlight tetras and 7 panda cories. The one downside to this experience was one of the panda cories was near dead upon arrival, so I put him in my quarantine tank (didn't quarantine the others since they were a fresh start in my 55 gal). The sick cory was dead by the next morning, I'm sure I could have had him replaced, but I would have had to pay the shipping and it wasn't worth it for one $3.65 fish. They also threw in an extra of each type of tetra, I assume on purpose, so I ended up with 17 of each.

I've had the fish in there for nearly 2 months now and I've had no illnesses or any problems at all. They are very healthy and happy. After all the issues I've had with my LFS, I must say I'm rather satisified with how my first online fish order has turned out :)

[aquatrippe]

Hey,

I understand you are dissapointed..but I think you got a fair deal.

This is why:

The shipping charges you mentioned are in the standard range for shipping aquatic animals.. you will most likely not find an online dealer that will ship for less than that..how could they?

Secondly, I am assuming you are unable to obtain SAE's locally and thus had to order them online.

This is my situation and predicament...because despite living in one of the worlds largest cities..[nyc] none of the dealers I have seen are able to get SAE's at a reasonable price or [more often] they simply cannot distinguish between SAE's and False SAE's or otos or chinese ae's or .....you get the picture.

In short if you recv'd genuine SAE's at the size you did, you are in good shape because this is when they are at their most ravenous..

These are great fish.. they will grow quickly..

Again..any online dealer is going to charge 20-25 bucks shipping whethere you buy one or 20 fish..

Aquatrippe

[cpr4cpu]

maybe I'm missing th epoint of all this, but a 1 inch algae eater would be preferred if I had my choice.
Sorry you felt like you didn't get the bargain you were hoping for sjeckell, but you did get live fish for your money, there's plenty of places that might have sent you what was in the picture only to have them arrive dead.
I am lucky enough to have "Mike". He gets what I want, and they arrive Wednesdays with the normal weekly shipment as regular as clockwork.
Good luck with the small SAE's, I am sure they won't disappoint you.