Liva Aquaria Shipping Location Confusion

[royaleFork]

I ordered a Diver's Den Two Spot tang this week from Live Aquaria's Diver's Den. On their website, it claims that all Diver's Den fish come from their Wisconsin Facility.

Buy Fish Online: Buy Tropical Fish, WYSIWYG corals, clams and inverts online at the Diver's Den® Store

According to them, their Wisconsin facility is nicer and has a better quarantine setup and process than their California facility. They also have different salinities at both facilities so it is helpful to know which one you are ordering from to make acclimation easier. This all sounds good and in my order confirmation email, it confirms that the order is shipping from Wisconsin:

With all this in mind, I was quite surprised when my tracking number came in and said the fish was being shipped from California.....

Now I am wondering if I actually got the fish I ordered? What else are they being less than truthful about? I guess I am going to order the rest of my fish from Dr Reef (who I have had a very good time ordering from). I reached out to support and was told they have that livestock in both facilities, which does not make sense with Diver's Den.

At this point, I am mostly writing this post as a warning to others that their Diver's Den is not what it appears to be, which unfortunately, is kind of the point of it.

At least the fish is healthy and active.

 

[LiveAquaria]

@royaleFork Good evening. We sincerely apologize for the concerns regarding your order. In the last couple of months, we have started to ship a small number of Diver's Den specimens out of California to avoid the stress of an extra transport. While it was noted on the individual Diver's Den Two Spot Bristletooth Tang page that it did ship from California, we apologize that the agent you spoke with was not aware of this. We appreciate your pointing out that the main Diver's Den page does need some disclaimers, and this is being reviewed as we speak. Please note that you did get the fish pictured on that page and that it did receive pristine care at the California facility. Again, we apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.

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[royaleFork]

A bit of an update on this. It has been almost a month since this post, and there has been a very slight change. Now, when you are browsing the diver's den, the picture will have a ship from California stamp:

This would be a good start if the top of the page didn't say this:

or if the side pane of the fish page didn't say this:

So, once you click on the fish, the only indication of where the fish is coming from is this in the description:

This might work if it did not conflict with the upper half of the page or the previous pages. This is clear misdirection.


The bottom line is, you really don't know where the fish is coming from here. It may not matter for most companies, but they claim their Wisconsin facility is better than their California facility:

If they are shipping from California to reduce stress, that is a very admirable goal, it would just be nice to know where the fish is actually coming from and also what the environment the fish was kept in. It is hard to believe that the California facility is doing the same as the Wisconsin facility when they spend so much time telling you the Wisconsin facility is the real top of the line: https://www.liveaquaria.com/general/general.cfm?general_pagesid=377

Bottom line, they are not clear about where the fish are coming from, what level of care the fish received, and doing nothing to compensate you when you notice the misdirection. This company needs to do some work to clear up their UI, or it could actually become a legal issue for them for false advertising. This is not OK, and should not be tolerated in this hobby.