Good Alternate to LiveAquaria?

[Notorious]

Ok so before I write this I want to emphasize that this is my personal experience with the company. Over the last week or so I have ordered 3... yes THREE... picasso triggers for my tank. I have a 40B I am using as a growout tank and he will be the only inhabitant. All 3 fish died... The first was DOA. Mind you this is overnight shipping. In my decade or so keeping and getting fished shipped to me I have never had a fish DOA from overnight shipping. So Liveaquaria was great and sent me a new trigger free of charge. I thought great must have been a fluke. The second trigger I acclimated and added him to the tank. The tank has a couple small mollies in it but that's it. Fish was dead by morning. I started to get irritated. They refunded me my money and I said I was going to try one last time. So earlier this week had the trigger shipped. It arrived I acclimated it and it was out and swimming about within like an hour. Great I thought! I found him dead that same night.

Here is why I am confused... I have not posted much but I spend a lot of time searching the forums. Diverns Den and occasionally Liveaquaria come up as like the number one for online retailers...

So I tested my water to see if maybe it was me which is completely possible. Tank has been running for two months now it is very much cycled. Nitrite=0, ammonia = 0, and nitrate is around 10ppm. Tank runs an aquaclear full of chemipure and purigen and I have an aquamaxx HOB skimmer on the tank. I don't understand what is going on?

Anyway can someone recommend another online retailer? Bluezoo seems to get mostly bad reviews. I was looking at vivid aquarium are they good? Just looking to order a small picasso trigger for a wetpet.

Thanks guys!

 

[Pooky Barr]

What is your acclimation process?

 

[Ranchhand02]

I have used saltwaterfish.com in the past with good results.

 

[Mad_Reefer]

I've always had great success with liveaquaria.com. They have the best packaging I've seen from any online store.
But I try to buy local.

 

[ssick92]

That sounds like a bizarre occurence(s). I have never had anything DOA or even die within months of a fish from LA. Maybe those fish are just more susceptible to stressors and weak upon shipping than your typical reef fish?

With that said, I have also ordered from Vivid with great results (only corals though).

And how long do you acclimate? Maybe try and get one of your LFS to order one special for you?

 

[Notorious]

So my tank salinity is right around 1.025. I noticed that the salinity of the shipping water was 1.018 which is really low right? Anyway the first 2 fish I acclimated like I usually do. I Float for 15-20min, open bad, add a little prime, then drip acclimate for a little over an hour because of the salinity difference. The third time I actually dropped the salinity of the tank over the next couple days to 1.021. So the acclimation process was a little shorter for the last fish but he still died that night.

Its really weird... And I am by no means saying anything about Liveaquaria per-se but this has been my experience. Are baby triggers just super sensitive to shipping?

I will look into saltwaterfish.com

 

[lazidog]

Live Aquaria

Live Aquaria

Have bought thousands of dollars worth of fish from there for my local club and myself, have only had a couple of DOA's. A filefish and a blenny. Had one fish 1/2 in shorter than described and they gave me a refund and kept the fish. Last fish from there was a $300 Aussie Tusk, arrived eating pellets and is my favorite fish.

 

[ssick92]

So my tank salinity is right around 1.025. I noticed that the salinity of the shipping water was 1.018 which is really low right? Anyway the first 2 fish I acclimated like I usually do. I Float for 15-20min, open bad, add a little prime, then drip acclimate for a little over an hour because of the salinity difference. The third time I actually dropped the salinity of the tank over the next couple days to 1.021. So the acclimation process was a little shorter for the last fish but he still died that night.

Its really weird... And I am by no means saying anything about Liveaquaria per-se but this has been my experience. Are baby triggers just super sensitive to shipping?

I will look into saltwaterfish.com

I've never tested the water that my fish arrived in, but 1.018 sounds incredibly low... I find it very hard to believe they keep their tanks that low. Maybe something is up with your testing? What are you using to test?

Bizarre...

 

[Lsufan]

Actually, I find a lot of online vendors & even lfs keep their fish only tanks with a lower salinity. It surprised me at first when I was a noob but I quickly learned to keep my qt tank at 1.021 salinity. The only time I get something new with a salinity of 1.025 is if it's a coral or it came out of a coral tank at the lfs.

 

[Pooky Barr]

Check out the Death in a Bag sticky at the top of the new to hobby thread. Since going this route w/ acclimation I have yet to lose a fish.

 

[Notorious]

I am using a standard refractometer... its been calibrated and everything. Again i've been using it for months.

The sticky was really helpfull thank you. I always read SW keepers drip acclimating for hours. Ugh ill do some more reading and try another website and see what happens. Thanks guys!

 

[Deleted member 336650]

My last LA order had 2 diff fish. One was at 1.019, the other at 1.023.

I had called beforehand to check on LA's salinity & the answer I got was "somewhere between 1.020 & 1.025." I had my QT set at 1.022 not sure what to expect. I waited a bit to add them & added some RODI to the QT to get to 1.021. Both fish are doing well at 5 weeks in QT.

I would have expected a better answer on the salinity used by LA. This was useless info for me to try to have my water matched to the incoming fish

 

[ThRoewer]

Diver's Den had some issues with cold packs - I had 3 baby Marine Betta DOA because the ice packs they added lowered the temperature too much for these small fish. The replacement I got from ORA directly shipped without an ice pack and arrived in perfect health. ORA uses better isolated boxes than DD.
With some of the DOA Marine Bettas I also got some East Pacific fish and those survived the cold, so it seem the ice is good for some fish, but deadly for others.

And while it was frustrating to lose these fish in shipping, I did not lose any money. In fact, I actually got the replacement for free (refund + replacement + free shipping).
LiveAquaria and Diver's Den may sometimes have issues, but they always do their best to make things right. You can't say the same about many others, if any.

As for the salinity - it doesn't matter much with fish as long as it isn't too far off. These days I do not even bother to drip acclimate, as fish generally can easily handle salinity jumps in the 1.016 to 1.030 range.
1.018 is quite common for fish systems and actually beneficial for Teleost fish in a holding or quarantine system.

 

[A sea K]

And while it was frustrating to lose these fish in shipping, I did not lose any money. In fact, I actually got the replacement for free (refund + replacement + free shipping).
LiveAquaria and Diver's Den may sometimes have issues, but they always do their best to make things right. You can't say the same about many others, if any..

Not my experience at all. I lost a few fish on separate occasions from LADD (pre Petco), while they were more than happy to issue a refund or credit on the purchase price I had to eat the shipping on the replacement fish.

 

[snorvich]

What is your acclimation process?

This. Sounds like that is the problem. LA (not DD) ships at about 1.017/8. Drip acclimation is not the way to go, and in any case the fish should have been quarantined.

 

[sde1500]

I have had a good experience, fish and coral, from Vivid.

 

[JWClark]

As alluded to here, your problem is the salinity difference. LA ships at 1.017/18 and DD is 1.025. Taking a fish at 1.017 and putting into a system at 1.025 will kill it every time, even with drip acclimation. This magnitude jump in salinity needs to be done over the course of days. Going the other way is generally not a problem however.

On your next fish test the bag water then dilute your tank to the bag water salinity and you will have much better success. I believe, for increasing salinity, the rule of thumb is no more than 0.002 increase per day. Any more and the fish's osmo-regulatory system will not be able to adapt and it will dehydrate.

 

[mikeatjac]

I have had two biologist tell me that to only worry about temperature acclamation. A fish in a bag has ammonia and a resulting lower pH. That is more damaging then anything else.

So float the bag for 20 minutes and net it out. I never have issues with this method.

 

[Notorious]

Yikes a lot of replies I will try to address everyone.

Diver's Den had some issues with cold packs - I had 3 baby Marine Betta DOA because the ice packs they added lowered the temperature too much for these small fish. The replacement I got from ORA directly shipped without an ice pack and arrived in perfect health. ORA uses better isolated boxes than DD.
With some of the DOA Marine Bettas I also got some East Pacific fish and those survived the cold, so it seem the ice is good for some fish, but deadly for others.

And while it was frustrating to lose these fish in shipping, I did not lose any money. In fact, I actually got the replacement for free (refund + replacement + free shipping).
LiveAquaria and Diver's Den may sometimes have issues, but they always do their best to make things right. You can't say the same about many others, if any.

As for the salinity - it doesn't matter much with fish as long as it isn't too far off. These days I do not even bother to drip acclimate, as fish generally can easily handle salinity jumps in the 1.016 to 1.030 range.
1.018 is quite common for fish systems and actually beneficial for Teleost fish in a holding or quarantine system.

I did notice that the water was pretty cold when I ordered my fish. But maybe I will try a more direct approach. I have lowered the salinity dramatically in the main tank so maybe that will help? AS I stated it is around 1.021 now. And you are right thier customer service is very good. I guess I can give it a try again and skip the drip acclimation process all together.

Not my experience at all. I lost a few fish on separate occasions from LADD (pre Petco), while they were more than happy to issue a refund or credit on the purchase price I had to eat the shipping on the replacement fish.

The first time they refunded everything. But the times after that they did not.

This. Sounds like that is the problem. LA (not DD) ships at about 1.017/8. Drip acclimation is not the way to go, and in any case the fish should have been quarantined.

Why would I need to quarantine the fish if its the only fish in the system? I mean yes I have some mollies in there but I don't care about them.

I have had a good experience, fish and coral, from Vivid.

Thanks for your input. Not sure which one I am going to try here.

As alluded to here, your problem is the salinity difference. LA ships at 1.017/18 and DD is 1.025. Taking a fish at 1.017 and putting into a system at 1.025 will kill it every time, even with drip acclimation. This magnitude jump in salinity needs to be done over the course of days. Going the other way is generally not a problem however.

On your next fish test the bag water then dilute your tank to the bag water salinity and you will have much better success. I believe, for increasing salinity, the rule of thumb is no more than 0.002 increase per day. Any more and the fish's osmo-regulatory system will not be able to adapt and it will dehydrate.

By dilute my tank to the bag water do you mean add tank water to the bag? Is that not the same thing as drip acclimating in essence? And again I said the last time the salinity was dropped to 1.021 which I do not think is a big difference...

Thanks for all the replies guys I may just try again but make sure tank water more closely matches the bag water.

 

[albano]

Taking a fish at 1.017 and putting into a system at 1.025 will kill it every time, even with drip acclimation.

Absolutely wrong...have drip acclimated hundreds of fish from 1.017 to 1.026 without problems