LR at oceanpro aquatics

misterd

New member
I just wanted to reccomend a great place for Live rock, from m y expereince, and other supplies. I have been getting all my LR from Oceanpro and was wondering how many other people do too. It is great quality rock with color and life at a great price and best of all you can cherry pick the best rock you find. The owner is really nice too and very helpful with giving me tips on my 90g FOWLR i just recently setup.

Has anyone else gone here? It is located in chino, i havent heard much talk on forums and was wondering.
-Thanks
Darren
 
I'll throw in a couple cents -

I drove up there from Dana Point, not a short drive. I got there and notice the place was filthy and the rock was held in dark, unlabelled vats. The prices were on the wall, but with the vats unlabelled, I knew *exactly* what was about to happen.

They have different prices for normal and "show" rock. What's the difference? Completely arbitrary. Now, even the "show" rock is much cheaper than many other retailers, but the arbitrary changing of prices on a whim is annoying.

For what it's worth, I grabbed about 100lbs of Marshall Island rock, and of that about 20lbs worth they declared to be 'show' rock. It was cheap, had a couple sponges but not much life, but it's still in my tank, and I'd go back if I had time, lived closer, and cared only about price.
 
consensus on them is very mixed. I think that if everyone were to agree with each other at best it would be: They're ok on a good day. I bought rock from them and also an overflow. the rock went off without a hitch. I called and got prices over the phone, drove over and got all the rock i needed. I wanted some more rubble (cheaper than larger pieces) and they ran out of the easy access stuff so they took a larger rock and broke it up to meet my needs. I was impressed.

my second experience went the other way. I bought an overflow from their ebay store. i live in LA so i asked my brother to pick it up from me. I called in early in the morning to find out what their hours were for the day and they said 5pm and i relayed that to my brother. He showed up around 345pm that day and the doors were closed, lights were off and there was no one in sight. I called while he was there and i got no one. after waiting a little while we accepted that they had closed early and went home. I called the next morning and the person said they might have just closed early and brushed me off like closing early on a wednesday is standard practice. Confirmed that they would stay open for my brother to try to pick it up again he went. When he got there he waited for someone to come out for about 10 minutes. He said while he was there the phones were ringing and it seemed like no one wanted to pick up so they just let it ring. He got the overflow from some guy that walked out and asked if thats what he wanted, handed it to him and left.
 
They have very shady business practices. I bought a mogul socket & bracket from them on Ebay using a Buy it now. Total of the socket & bracket was $11. They sent me a bill & wanted $21 (total of $32) to ship it from Chino to Whittier UPS Ground. Yep you read right............$21 shipping for something that should have cost $3-$4 to ship. I told them to keep thier crap & I'd buy it somewhere else. They hit me w/ negative feedback saying I was trying to rip them off. After I bought the socket & bracket from Marine Depot (for $17 shipped TOTAL), I blacked out all my information & faxed them my receipt, along w/ a note at the bottom saying this is why I'll shop here & not at your place.

Thier customer service is also non-exsistant..............Calling on the phone is fruitless because you'll never get anyone to anwser. If you do get an anwser, more then likely, the person will be rude & act like they're doing you a favor by anwsering the phone or your questions.

IMO customer service is everything. If one has this much trouble BUYING products from them, can you imagine if you have to RETURN an item?????

Another point, they used to be a RC Sponsor.............they also used to sell @ Ebay under Ocean Pro & then switched thier user ID. Sounds like a company that the public has caught on to thier tactics.........

But it's JMO...........................

Steve :D
 
Did this happen recently? When i went there it was ok, i think if its a busy day, there employees cannot help everyone as personally as they helped me.

The place isnt the cleanest store i have been to, but its a wherehouse that sells wholesale and most of there orders are done online (i think) so they dont get too many walkins. I do agree they should label there vats of LR better and have a palce where walkins can see the rock clearly, the LR i cherrpicked was in boxes that just arrived from fiji so it was easy to see it all and choose.

If you ordered the Live rock, how was the quality, i still think its great. I guess the money you save from buying cheaper LR is made up for by lower customer service. Personally, i would rather pay less.
 
I ordered online and the rock wasn't cured like they state.

you get what you pay for my rock I got was the Tonga Kaelini

didn't have color or coraline algae on it just a few spots here and there. I also bought some Live sand that was better than the rock. the same rock is in a bucket on my balcony ......
 
i heard that there Vats there is no lights and if you want to get rock you have to reach intere and you cant see what you are getting
 
there's no lights, but you can still see in it. Shop lights whatever. All of my LR has came from ocean pro because it's the cheapest I can find unless it's from here. I think it's only worth it for the LR, nothing else. Like Steve says, customer service sucks, they tried to change on the price on me when I first bought the rock. That's before they had prices on the wall. For me, the aggrevation is worth the savings in the LR. I bought the base fiji buna, so no growth on it.
 
yah, I have orderd from them before and they didnt have anything in stock, and when I tried to cancel they sent me an order with rock that wasnt even what I asked for. Last time I ever ordered there. I get my stuff now from a local online place now who gets them from a transhipper in LAX and it is really nice rock, eva, uaniva, vanuatu etc for 2.50 per lb. Not cured, but then again, cured rock costs 3 times that. Stay away from them is bottom line I think.
 
I had a pretty bad experience.
ordered some live rock from them via ebay.. i mean it was the best price around..but took them at least 3-4 weeks or so before they shipped it out. ( and i paid it immediately via paypal).


So pretty much i ordered live rock, and it took about over a month to receive it.
On top of that, i was over charged. they charged me 3 times the amount. I called them numerous times to fix it..and they said they did...but they actually didn't and credited someone else's account.
probably had to call them a total number of 4 times until they actually took off the other 2 charges.

rock was OK.. came with a lot of green coraline.. took a while to cure and once cured took probably about 1/2 yr until coraline colored up to a purple.

again, definately the cheapest price, but I wouldn't go thru the headache again .
 
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