The anniversary sale is probably a good marker for when their quality began heavily dropping actually. Personally, I noticed it slightly before when their tanks began to have red and green cyano appearing in their tanks.
Though, I'll disagree in that I never had an issue with getting a fish from their to eat after the initial "shyness" wore-off in about 24-48 hours after purchase. I've gotten all but 2 of my current fish from Hidden Reef, but this was many months ago and before the quality issues I've mentioned. Fish Factory, the Foxface I got would not eat and eventually died within a week, however, I also got a Diamond Goby from them that is alive and extremely healthy a year later, though I made sure I got there when the order came in and that it didn't touch their water so who knows lol... BTW, in regards to inverts, HR's tanks look to be a mess for Corals at the moment, and their Feather Duster tank looked scary as well. Shrimps, starfish, anemone's, etc looked well enough though. I've noticed that Fish Factory's frag tank has a lot of bubble algae floating around personally, so I'm a bit nervous to purchase it from there as I'm worried about spores being on the frags, plus their prices, IMO are a bit high just like on their live stock (a fox face at HR is about $25, it's $40 at FF, Flame Angel is $45 at HR, $55 at FF... And HR has to have more overhead due to their building and staff size so I really don't understand it).
Allquatics in Trenton, I had a bad experience there with Fresh Water (check out their small fish tanks, like tetras and take a look at the "sucker" for the filter... filled with dead carcasses... Horible), I can't say much about their Saltwater live stock though as I haven't purchased any from them. I actually went there yesterday for the first time in months believe it or not, the salt water fish do *look* healthy though, didn't noticed any ich or skin diseases I've been seeing at HR over the past few months but the tanks seem a bit dirty to me, though they may just be "old tanks" so
... Allquatics corals though, WOW, great prices and the frag tank looked clean of bubble algae and other nuisances! Their frags seem to universally be $20 for LPS/Polyps/Softies (I didn't even look at their SPS as I'm not "ready" for SPS yet
), got a really nice looking Blastos Coral with two heads for $20 + tax and it seems to be doing very well after approximately 24 hours of being in my tank, of course they also have larger "non-frag" corals for more money but they also had some "high end" Acans and others for reasonable prices.
With Aquarium Center I've had nothing but good experiences so far, their coral tanks are clean too, the issue is the distance. I did notice that they had some sick looking fish when I was there about 3-4 weeks back, but when I was there the other day getting a cleaner goby (this past Thursday) every thing seemed more-or-less back to normal quality wise. I guess I'll keep an eye on them as the quality in the area seems to be slipping as of late, which is a shame as HR and AA, especially, used to be highly-regarded for not just only this region but the entire tri-state area.
I'm not familiar with ACC in Belmar (or even what ACC stands for!
) but Belmar is going to be a *HIKE*, even compared to Blackwood (I'm 15-20 minutes south of Trenton/Hamilton).
I'm glad (and sad!) I'm not the only one noticing a quality drop in the region though
