Experience with Reed-Mariculture

[dantodd]

Have you ever had one of those customer experience where EVERYTHING goes wrong?

Well I did.

I had some clarkii eggs that were due to hatch this Tuesday. Naturally I called Randy at rotifer.com on Friday to pick up some rots for the fry. Nothing like planning ahead!

Well, they were in the process of moving and the rotifers are all at the mariculture facility and not the shipping location. No problems. I'll pick them up on Monday.

Well, I took my son to school on Monday and make the 30 minute drive down to Campbell to pick up my rots. No joy. Randy sent me a number of emails saying that they weren't going to be in on time and that I could come down on Tuesday to pick them up. Oh drat, a 30 minute drive for nothing. Well..... not quite nothing. Randy is a super nice guy and gave me a ton of info about raising my rotifers. He also gave me a small bottle of arcti-pods as a parting gift since we had crossed wires even though it was not his fault.

BTW: Arcti-pods ROCK!

Tuesday came and it turns out that they still weren't available until after 4pm. I was heavy into a candy making session and my wife had a dinner Tuesday night that I had to supply caramels and truffles. On top of all that I missed the hatch on Tuesday so I had no fry to feed anyway.

Wednesday morning I head down to Campbell again. No one was in the warehouse and no one answered the door when I knocked. I waited 20 minutes and tried again. Still no answer. I decided to call and Randy trekked down to the old storefront thinking that I was there. It turns out that they couldn't hear me knocking! I guess I gotta cowboy up next time I knock on a door!!!!

Well. Randy gave me a few extra rotifers but the rotifer food and filter wasn't available. You just knew this couldn't be easy!

Randy offered to overnight the additional pieces to me and I didn't have the heart to tell him that we had already missed the hatch.

I know none of this isn't the fault of Randy or the staff or Reed's and they could have easily just said. "Hey, order online and we'll ship like we do to all of our customers and don't try to get food for fish the day before they hatch."

But they didn't say that. Randy and Kathy went out of their way to make me, their customer, happy.

I am now a customer for life. It isn't always the ease of a transaction that makes you appreciate an excellent company but also how they handle those situations where things just don't go right no matter how hard you try.



THANKS for the great customer service!



PS. be careful when you are siphoning rotifers. They don't taste like much but you can sure tell they're in there.

 

[fingerwrinkles]

Just to echo, I've been dealing with Randy and Cathy since before they were in the hobbyist scene, and the experiences have been nothing short of top notch on all accounts. They do a great job and I always enjoy "having" to give them a call.

PS ... be VERY careful when siphoning rotifers because they can cause SERIOUS intestinal consternation if they get in your gut. I cannot confirm with absolute certainty that I've personally experienced this, but now if there's any hint of "tasting" them it's straight to the Listerine bottle! (Perhaps Jose might be a better alternative though ...)

 

[Vincerama2]

Hey Dan, could you have used frozen rotifers from the LFS? (just wondering!)

V

 

[GreshamH]

Unfortunatly no. Most larvea are programmed to hunt moving objects. It's hard to simulate the movement, with out messing up the fry.

 

[Mr. Ugly]

Gresham set me up with rotifer and pod cultures for my frogfish larvae

While I"m waiting on the next spawning, I've been maintaining the rotifers and feeding them to my lps. Those corals have never been happier

 

[dantodd]

I did try to start them off on powdered flake a couple times.

The problem is, as Gresham points out, that they only take moving objects AND they need to feed nearly continuously Without having to move more than 1-2 body lengths so anything not alive falls out of the water column too fast to be usable.

 

[mobert]

Hi Dan,
Good luck with future hatches!

By the way, I consider being able to pick up from the shipping location a real courtesy. They are not really set up for customers there and I realize that that it takes extra effort for them to accommodate and I really appreciate it. I've had problems picking up also but I live really close and I now always call first.

Thanks Randy and Cathy for your continued support and great products.

 

[mobert]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7782221#post7782221 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dantodd
I did try to start them off on powdered flake a couple times.

I have been able to raise Clarkii using the San Francisco Strain of Brine Shrimp. You can get it from: http://brineshrimpdirect.com/store.cfm?d=3249&c=5272&p=27759&do=detail

Of course your survival rate is more than ten times better with rotifers.

 

[dantodd]

hmmm.... I have a ton of SFBS cysts. I didn't even think about trying those since they are SO much bigger than rots. Oh well. The culture is going very well and now I just need to wait and hope she is back on her old schedule. If so she'll lay again tomorrow. I suspect she's close as she looks pretty heavily laden with eggs right now, and she's eating like a pig, I'm so proud of her