Online Fish vendors, petsolutions, fishsupply?

[mattheadington]

I know liveaquaria seems to be a favorite, but I was wondering if anyone had any experiances with fishsupply, petsolutions, or vividaquariums with fish orders? I asked petsoltions a question and received a very nice detailed response. Good customer service but says nothing of their fish.

I was going to order from saltwaterfish.com, but I just emailed them and instructed them to cancel my order due to Norms experiance.

Anyhow, please let me know of and good/bad experiances.

Thanks

 

[bluehippotang]

Fishsupply is really high on their shipping. They do it to make up for their low prices on fish.

 

[asnatlas]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7109552#post7109552 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bluehippotang
Fishsupply is really high on their shipping. They do it to make up for their low prices on fish.

Really high ?? If I rem right when I placed my last order with them it was $30.00 for overnite shipping... If I recall most orders over the net are about $20.00-$30.00 for overnite shipping... As far as the fish and prices they were very good on both... Customer Service was very good as well... I would highly recommend Fishsupply, depending on when you order and if you wanted to split the shipping I am looking for a few fish...

 

[cward]

I'm a little leery about ordering fish online. I would rather pay a little extra from the LFS to make sure I was getting a fish that is eating and looks healthy.

 

[szwab]

i haven't had much luck ordering fish online. It's worth the extra coupla bucks to see the fish before hand. Possible exception would be on really hardy fish.

 

[Reefbone]

Pet Solutions does NOT ship from Ohio so forget about saving on the overnight charges. I have not bought livestock there so I can not speak to their quality.

People seem to be happy with marinedepotlive from what I can tell. If you really want to save money, wait for a CORA group buy or order enough to get free shipping ( $ varies from site to site).

Heck you could even try to put together a group buy yourself.

 

[bluehippotang]

Asnatlas

Maybe their prices have improved dramatically. I ordered from them around 3 years ago and my shipping was over $80 for overnight.

 

[porky]

Remember Flying Fish Express? Whatever happened to FFE?
I ordered all my fish from them and they were always really healthy. Never had a problem...

 

[geo]

FFE is now DFS. I would much rather purchase a fish locally than on line.

 

[asnatlas]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7110139#post7110139 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bluehippotang
Asnatlas

Maybe their prices have improved dramatically. I ordered from them around 3 years ago and my shipping was over $80 for overnight.

Flat shipping promo is back!

Hmm, when I order about a yr ago it was :

California Only $19.99

All the other States $29.99

now it's...

California Only $29.99

All the other States $39.99

 

[asnatlas]

LAME !!! I just say the following :

Box Charge.

There is no extra box charges on live stock orders. If shipments require more than one box, each additional box after the first will be $15.00.

 

[cheelo]

i have ordered livegoods from petsolutions and have had great success. they have a special now. as for hardgoods, it will be there the next day, at reasonable rates. lfs' prices are pretty high, i can usually order 2 fish/inverts for the price of 1 at the lfs. i guess it all depend on how far you live from your lfs. 3 hrs roundtrip for me.

 

[TOURKID]

newbie in columbus... so where do fellow ohioians buy theyre local fish? i hear byerlys is the place to go. i havent been there yet.. but have had real bad luck at one columbus store....

 

[asnatlas]

http://www.phishybusiness.com

He will be opening a store locally...

1121 N Hamilton Rd
Gahanna, Oh 43230

 

[Subrafta]

Matt,

Premium Aquatics is great for captive raised fish from ORA. Their selection of wild caught fish varies. They are by far my favorite source of snails based on price and quality / survivablity, and they've got a good rep for live rock. They're located just outside of Indianapolis, www.premiumaquatics.com. Shipping to Ohio is generally fast and cheap.

Here's a list of the saltwater stores near Dayton, along with their hours, phone numbers, and web sites. You can find more info about them in the site forums.
http://www.daytonreef.com/local_fish_stores.htm

John

 

[TOURKID]

sweet. cant wait to check it out!!!

 

[mattheadington]

Thanks for the replies, theyt have been helpfull. I do know that petsolutions does not ship from ohio, its from Cali but its good to hear that petsolutions havent had any major problems. Also the email contact I received was fast, detailed, and was from their livestock delivery manager who did not hide the fact that their marines come from cali when I didnt even ask.

asnatlas is correct, $39.99 is correct on shipping, if you want to go in half on shipping let me know, I plan on ordering atleast $100 worth or so($200 is free shipping), just shoot a pm or post. I also feel that many of you are correct about sticking to the LFS, for many fish I wilol (planning on two chaetodon semilarvatus from byerlys in the near future) but it is much cheaper and the fish I intend to order are fairly hardy butterflies that are at times highly over priced in the stores(3 fold). Due to this I am inclined to place an order and see how things go. Any further experiences to share would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[szwab]

some food for thought on shipping from cali to Ohio
when placing orders they are 3 hours behind....
so when they ship around 5 pm it's 8 pm here. delivery to ohio by 10 am means that the livestock actually gets here quicker than ordering from florida or the east coast. 14 hours compared to 17 hours.

I shyed away from ordering west coast but this theory actually makes it a bit more attractive. Norm and I were talking about this and he enlightened me. makes sense anyone wish to poke holes in this theory?
I still think it is way worth it to see what I am buying in person though

 

[TacoKing]

Interesting. I never thought about it that way Mark. Makes perfect sense. The total time would be less shipping from west coast vs. any other location. Especially if the shippers drop the good off late in the evening like they typically do.

 

[szwab]

yep I think Norm is a genius