Ordering fish online

mdbaskett

mdbaskett

AC Members
Jul 12, 2005
50
0
0
Seattle, WA
I just got my first online fish order. It was a kind of experiment to see how well the company did before I buy some of the more expensive stock from them. 5 of 6 platies arrived alive and healthy. One os still alive but sitting on the bottom of the tank upside down breathing hard. I'm thinking of just putting him down. Same with the 6 cories. 5 are great, the 6th is lying on his side breathing hard.

Do any of you get fish shipped? What are your experiences?
 
I buy pretty well all my fish on line. All depends on the type of fish you are buying and who you buy them from.

Some fish just do not ship as well as others do.

I'm very impressed with the fish that LiveAquaria.com sells. I've made several purchases and have only had 1 shrimp DOA and one guppy "injured". Guppy made a full recovery. Yesterday, in fact, I received a school of 10 rummy nose tetras and 3 rasboras from them. The fishes' health was excellent. Not extremely stressed and they didn't even try to hide in the QT tank. They just want some food :)

I've purchased two lots of fish from ****************. I bought a couple of hillstream loaches which did not ship well at all. They were very pale when they got here, would not eat, and died within a week.

Just got another one in today -- 7 SAE, 2 mystery snails, and 6 amano shrimp. The fish are stressed, but look healthy and the shrimp shipped extremely well. They're in my other QT tank and the SAE are still rather jumpy and stressed looking. I've covered the tank with a large towel hoping that they will settle down a bit. I do not know if I will order from this place again.

I've bought several "rare" fish from various dealers on AquaBid and have had no problems at all. I'll continue to buy from them.

I've never bought a fish online that had a disease and that's probably because if they ship fish carrying ich or something worse they could lose their entire reputation. Word of mouth carries far on the internet.

You take your chances when you order on line, but I've less success from buying from a local chain shop (Petsmart, Petco). You never know if the fish are labeled properly or not, if they have ich (and many of them do) or some other parasite.

My local LFS has great fish, but not a great selection and definitely not the fish that *I* want.

Roan
 
I agree about the LFS. WE have one LFS here with a large stock of not very healthy fish and another with a small stock of very healthy fish. I go to the first to look and the second to buy but that leaves a lot of fish that I just can't get my hands on.

The fish I just got from liveaquaria.com are beautiful, with the exception of the 2 who are dead/dying. The rest are happily frolicking in the QT, eating and even exhibiting mating behavior.
 
Let LiveAquaria know about the two fish if they don't recover and they will issue a credit for your next order.

I three of my corycats from them and two were stressed from the ordeal. IME they do stress easily regardless of how you ship them.

If LiveAquaria has the fish I want, I definitely buy from there. I know I can count on them to ship me good, healthy, and relatively unstressed fish.

If they don't have it, and nowadays they usually don't, then I have to take my chances elsewhere :)

Roan
 
does anyone know where i can get apistogramma cacatuoides?? online that is.
 
Exactly how much is shipping? Seems you would need to buy alot of fish to justify the high shipping costs.
 
Shipping is usually around 25$ for overnight express, but it depends on where you buy the fish and where you live. I've paid anywhere from 25-50$ for shipping, with the 50$ being fish shipped overnight from CA to VA.

As for shipping cost justification, if you can't source the fish locally or it's a really rare fish or the breeding on a local fish is iffy at best, that's justification in itself, in my books :)

Roan
 
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