Integral9 November 26, 2012 Share November 26, 2012 Being one of the first etailers I used when I got into the hobby years ago, I have maintained their bookmark in my browser. However, I tend to buy my livestock locally and when I do go online, I have a few other places I look at first. My wife ordered a cleaner pack, a coral, and a couple of fish from this site. Upon arrival, the inverts showed up no problem. Smaller than I like though. Aside from the turbo's it was like everything came in sized for a 10g aquarium (blue & red hermits, nass. and cerith snails). But no fish. When my wife called about the fish, they told her that the they had oversold their stock and the fish had shipped seperately. In addition the shipment had some bad luck and was held up in Indianopolis overnight. So much for overnight shipping, but not the etailers fault... It showed up a day later and to my surprise the fish was still alive (not doing well though). The fish that arrived is a "medium yellow belly hippo" size 2.5 - 3.5 inches. To me that means, 2.5" w/out the tail fin. This guy is barely 2.5" with the tail fin. Also, I'm not sure when these fish start to show their yellow bellys, but this little guy is very blue on the bottom, so I'm not totally convinced it is a yellow belly. Only time will tell though. Fish is doing well in QT now. So my wife then called them about the other fish, and again they told her that they had oversold their stock and that she was on the waiting list this time, and hopefully they would get more stock in over the weekend as they weren't going to ship anything else that week due to the holiday. This overselling of stock is quite a problem for them... I just hope the other fish (not sure what it is as it's a gift to me) won't be so tiny (it's moving in with a 4" powder brown, 3" yellow, & 4" exquisite wrasse + smaller company). The Hippo arrived on Wednesday, still waiting on the other fish. Hopefully it will ship today. The packing job SWF did was good, tripple bagged with a black shrowd bag and in a generous amount of water, styro peanuts and heat packs in a styro box in cardboard box. IMHO: They really shot themselves in the foot with the multiple shipments. My wife got free shipping, and SWF will have paid for it in triplicate (assuming they ship the next fish). That doesn't seem like a sustainable business model. I'd also prefer it if the etailers would hold my orders until they could ship everything at once. I am not happy with the new model I am seeing where the etailers must ship as much as they can ASAP. I understand other people feel differently, but I would like it if they could give me that option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smallreef November 26, 2012 Share November 26, 2012 I have ordered from them many times over the past 10 years.... with that being said, my last order in August SUCKED! all the fish were very small and 1 died.... This was the first time I had had a problem... I think its the over-abundance of new online retailers and the prices and quality are suffering for them to make a decent $$ which is why i normally go to LFS ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bandr February 11, 2013 Share February 11, 2013 We have ordered from them several times. Generally good experience. The prices are very good. The items have all been as described. We did have an anemone and a shrimp die - they credited the cost to the account with a code. The catch is you must enter the code to use it ... but you can only use one code per order. Since they always have some sort of sale going on you cannot use the code unless you have larger losses than the sale. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angel not fish February 11, 2013 Share February 11, 2013 I ordered some time ago. The fishes came sick and died, they gave me credit in store, but I have had to reorder, pay delivery etc... Tried again some months later and the same happened. NEVER MORE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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