Thanos
Community Member
I had a Diamond Goby jump out of my tank a few months back due to a small whole in the cover which is now fixed and decided to get order a new one this past week through a sale on LiveAquaria, which I always assumed to be one of the most reputable sites for ordering fish online. The fish comes (waited for the deliveryman and took it straight from his hand), and the packing job is downright awful; literally petco and petsmart's in-store packing is better than what they sent. Very small bag and just one small heatpack that was just barely keeping the bag lukewarm, and sure enough the fish was dead on arrival.
I figured this was just a rare screwup on their end and filled out their DOA guarantee, and they sent another one two days later. While this one was packed as you would expect a shipped fish to be packed, after spending an hour acclimating it and introducing it to the tank (with the lights off of course), the fish was blatantly on the verge of death. Slow breathing, hardly any movement, and not even trying to sift sand (which my previous one did instantly upon being added). I hoped it was just stress and so I gave it overnight, and by the following day its condition hadn't improved and it died. Nothing was remotely harassing it and a parameter check showed nothing out of the ordinary, not to mention its a mature 65 gallon and both the fish and corals have been doing very well. Additionally, I have ordered and acclimated shipped fish in the past from other distributors and haven't had any issues.
At this point I just assumed that something must have been wrong with their goby stock, and so I contacted customer support to explain the situation and got pretty much the worst response possible. I was told that I already got "one fish on them" and that they wouldn't be doing anything else to compensate, despite sending one dead fish and one fish on the verge of death. After trying to explain the absurdity of their decision, they gave the value of the fish as store credit (which was $30 out of the $70 it cost after shipping+bagging), cause of course I'm going to try to order from them again after they this experience /s.
Overall I'm just really disgusted by the way this was handled. It always seemed like LiveAquaria was the golden standard for online fish retailers but I seriously have my doubts after this whole experience, especially with them just not standing by their guarantee even though it seems to clearly be their fault.
I figured this was just a rare screwup on their end and filled out their DOA guarantee, and they sent another one two days later. While this one was packed as you would expect a shipped fish to be packed, after spending an hour acclimating it and introducing it to the tank (with the lights off of course), the fish was blatantly on the verge of death. Slow breathing, hardly any movement, and not even trying to sift sand (which my previous one did instantly upon being added). I hoped it was just stress and so I gave it overnight, and by the following day its condition hadn't improved and it died. Nothing was remotely harassing it and a parameter check showed nothing out of the ordinary, not to mention its a mature 65 gallon and both the fish and corals have been doing very well. Additionally, I have ordered and acclimated shipped fish in the past from other distributors and haven't had any issues.
At this point I just assumed that something must have been wrong with their goby stock, and so I contacted customer support to explain the situation and got pretty much the worst response possible. I was told that I already got "one fish on them" and that they wouldn't be doing anything else to compensate, despite sending one dead fish and one fish on the verge of death. After trying to explain the absurdity of their decision, they gave the value of the fish as store credit (which was $30 out of the $70 it cost after shipping+bagging), cause of course I'm going to try to order from them again after they this experience /s.
Overall I'm just really disgusted by the way this was handled. It always seemed like LiveAquaria was the golden standard for online fish retailers but I seriously have my doubts after this whole experience, especially with them just not standing by their guarantee even though it seems to clearly be their fault.
