Not happy with LA - Tail Spot Blenny was dead on arrival, water in bag was 49 degrees F

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TankYou

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Good luck. Keep us updated.
I swear, fedex gets here at 2pm and brought me 300$ in dead cold fish. Seriously, if you don’t know how or don’t care, don’t ship fish in cold weather. The money I could care less about. But to put fish in a bag on their way to a cold dark grave is atrocious. Not to mention the salinity is 1.029, as usual, for no good reason other than to make it that much more stressful to acclimate fish that actually arrive alive.
 

MoMoTheMonster

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Looks like I'm not the only one having trouble with fish being shipped super cold. I ordered 3 banggai cardinalfish, neon blue goby, serpent starfish, misbar clownfish (received a regular clown instead), squamosa clam, CUC snails/hermit crabs, and a chalice coral from @oceans garden aquaculture. When I placed order (11/24/20) it wasn't freezing here in STL but they didn't ship until 11/30/20 and of course STL had some of the coldest days yet. Therefore I was delivered mostly dead fish with a single heat pack on the top of the styrofoam box. EVERYTHING looked dead, there was no color to any of them, it was awful! I quickly started to float them in my tank to warm them up but still had casualties including 2 cardinalfish, a few snails, and my coral was a disaster. Everything else is struggling and super stressed and first thing this morning my last cardinalfish died. I hope everything else pulls through but I doubt it will. So sad.

I had corals delivered the same day from Salty Underground and they were perfect! And I've got an order from DD Live Aquaria (WI) due tomorrow that I'm hoping goes ok but starting to wonder if online ordering is to risky for the fish.

*FYI - clam wasn't for me. I'm not that advanced yet ;)
 

4theluvofcoral

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That sucks :/, I'm sorry. What fish was it?
It wasn't a fish it was a Feather star and they are very sensitive shippers at that. Very sad because it managed to somehow survive the extreme temperature fluctuation but it was too late. It was fighting until the very end. This animal didn't have to die.
 
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Mical

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Before the Covid stuff, rule of thumb - DO NOT order livestock near the holidays unless you can make arrangements w/vendor to ship later. Now with more folks at home, shippers are having tough time just meeting standard shipping times.
I agree, 1 heatpak is not a acceptable in winter time in US.
 
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hds4216

hds4216

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Before the Covid stuff, rule of thumb - DO NOT order livestock near the holidays unless you can make arrangements w/vendor to ship later. Now with more folks at home, shippers are having tough time just meeting standard shipping times.
I agree, 1 heatpak is not a acceptable in winter time in US.
Mine got here on time, it was just way too cold for it to only have one heat pack.
 

syrinx

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My coral order from DD a couple three weeks ago came with worst packaging ever-and yes 57 degree water, a flimsy band of big bubbles that allowed bag with coral to flop around until the bag broke-losing all water. Corals are tough, so was able to save it-but I had hoped it was just a one time thing. I have ordered thousands upon thousands of dollars of specimens from DD over the years-and this last year has been a decline, and this last order was no less than shocking.
 

byachna

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Reading these stories is making me bite my finger nails even more. I placed my first order for a Diamond Watchman goby, along with 25 Astrea snails. They were supposed to arrive today by 12PM EST, but FedEx decided to delay delivery until tomorrow. Currently it's 29 degrees and I am panicking that I am going to receive a belly-up fish tomorrow with a side of snail-cubes. I'm crossing my fingers that they make it through the night tonight. Such a terrible thought!
 

ReefRy

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@hds4216 Good morning. We are very sorry to hear of the condition that your ordered arrived. Our facilities carefully evaluate destination and in-transit weather conditions when determining proper packaging. We apologize for any potential oversights with the fulfillment of your order. Please PM us your order information as we want to look into this as soon as possible and work with you on a personal level. Thank you!

How many times are they going to issue this same canned apology in response to their continued animal abuse? I wish people had other options available rather than patronizing a company that clearly has no interest in the preservation of life. If only there was a regulatory agency to look into pulling their business license...
 

LiveAquaria

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We sincerely thank you all for your feedback. The health and well being of the animals as well as customer experience and satisfaction have and will continue to remain our top priority. Based on this overall feedback as well as other recent customer concerns that have been brought to our attention, our facilities manager is committed to this being his top priority. They are evaluating every process involved with fulfilling our livestock orders and have already made several adjustments that will provide for a positive experience. Thank you for calling out your concerns, we hear you loud and clear and are working to satisfy each of you!
 

MoMoTheMonster

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I wanted to share my experience from DD on my Wrasse and BTA delivery today. Received package before scheduled time. Items secured with lots of water in bags. Good sized heat pack on top and still warm when delivered! My wrasse is happily swimming around his new home. The BTA is a bit strange looking but fingers crossed it starts to look like an anemone again in a day or two
 

Cell

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I thought people were happy with the new ownership. I remember a thread here of people commentating they had a good amount of faith in the new owner to turn things around. Yet, from what I can tell, it's only gotten worse. DD used to be the bright spot for LA.
 

L3leedingstar

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I also wanted to share that my order (tail spot, bristletooth, dotty back) arrived today packed well, with heat packs still warm and salinity was perfect at 35. I'll admit I was very concerned after reading many posts from people who were not so lucky. Hopefully they really do hear our concerns and strive to do better... great job Live Aquaria (Diver's Den).
 

jamie1210

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I'm reading all these comments here and it makes me so sad. I've been a customer of Liveaquaria/Divers Den since early 2000's, and the service as well as the care for the animals have been top notch--at least back in the day. If your animal didn't make it, they refunded your money, no questions asked. The packaging was superb. I think I had a 98% survival rate, DOA's were rare-granted, I live in southern CA, where the coldest winter is 60 degrees though.

I haven't ordered much from them anymore, especially since they started being fickle w/the return policy--and now charging a box fee as well. Reading people's comments on declining company satisfaction is disheartening.
 

MoMoTheMonster

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I wanted to share my experience from DD on my Wrasse and BTA delivery today. Received package before scheduled time. Items secured with lots of water in bags. Good sized heat pack on top and still warm when delivered! My wrasse is happily swimming around his new home. The BTA is a bit strange looking but fingers crossed it starts to look like an anemone again in a day or two
BTA didn't make it but wasn't because of being cold. Shipping must've been too stressful for it. :(
 

oceans garden aquaculture

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Looks like I'm not the only one having trouble with fish being shipped super cold. I ordered 3 banggai cardinalfish, neon blue goby, serpent starfish, misbar clownfish (received a regular clown instead), squamosa clam, CUC snails/hermit crabs, and a chalice coral from @oceans garden aquaculture. When I placed order (11/24/20) it wasn't freezing here in STL but they didn't ship until 11/30/20 and of course STL had some of the coldest days yet. Therefore I was delivered mostly dead fish with a single heat pack on the top of the styrofoam box. EVERYTHING looked dead, there was no color to any of them, it was awful! I quickly started to float them in my tank to warm them up but still had casualties including 2 cardinalfish, a few snails, and my coral was a disaster. Everything else is struggling and super stressed and first thing this morning my last cardinalfish died. I hope everything else pulls through but I doubt it will. So sad.

I had corals delivered the same day from Salty Underground and they were perfect! And I've got an order from DD Live Aquaria (WI) due tomorrow that I'm hoping goes ok but starting to wonder if online ordering is to risky for the fish.

*FYI - clam wasn't for me. I'm not that advanced yet ;)
Heat pack on top of styrofoam? Please dm order number.
 

oceans garden aquaculture

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MoMoTheMonster

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Lol on the roundhouse kick!

Yes, the heat pack was attached INSIDE of the styrofoam lid at the top. Sadly, my replacement cardinals suffered the same fate today and were delivered cold again. Cold heat pack and super cold water. One was dead when I opened box and other died during acclimation. Coral looked great this time though so there's a plus!
 

Kenneth Wingerter

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I had better luck with blue zoo in winter. They even called me to ask me if I could pick up the fish at the UPS/FedEx as it was particularly cold that day. This means they tracking the weather at the destination of my package!! You can also pick dates for delivery.
maybe blue zoo is more on top of stuff than they once were. i remember buying a garibaldi from them and explicitly requesting NO heat pack, as it would be going into a 55F coldwater tank. instead, they packed a ****** heat pack in there. weather wasn't even all that cold lol. the bag water wasn't just warm, it was freaking hot. luckily, i was able to save the fish, but it definitely was not happy.
 

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