Received EXTRA fish on my order, What should I do.

[Dr. Reef Verified Sponsor]

Hi Everyone
This concern has been brought up a few times on different forums and also emailed to us regularly.

Answer to this question is:
We do ship extra fish on some species that do not ship well. For example: Chromis, Lyretail or dispar Anthia, Green Clown Gobies, Yellow coris wrasse, Melanarus wrasse, carpenter or Mccosker wrasse to name a few.
Reasoning is they dont ship well so we ship extra. When you place an order for example for 1 yellow coris, we reserve 2 in your name out of our inventory. If 1 doesnt survive the qt process we have a backup and you dont lose time waiting for a 2nd one to come and wait another 30 days. So mutliple fish are reserved for you. Once we ship we ship extra of that fish so in case 1 doesnt make shipping atleast you have a backup.

Now to the question what if both make it and I dont have room to keep both.
What we recommend is to keep 1 healthier/active looking fish in the main tank and other in acclimation box or sump or in a area where you can grab it back out easily. After 1 week has passed and you are comfortable to say one in main tank will settle and live well then take the extra one and give/gift/sell the other one to local fish store or fellow reefer or donate it to schools/aquariums/zoo's or another place where they can accomodate a fish. If all efforts fail keep it in the sump till you can find a home for it.
Normally your reserved fish would have been qted together, so likley they might coexist but not a guarantee.

Why do we do this?
Well no one likes to lose fish, Unfortunately it happens in shipping with some fragile fish. If you were to order and receive dead fish after waiting for a month it would not be a good expereince. Then you will have to wait another 30-45 days to receive a replacement which will also not leave a good taste, Also as a business point of view its cheaper to ship an extra fish than to pay for shipping, use more resources like labor, effort, packing material and sticker labels etc all over again to replace what we already know might be a problem shipping.

We are always looking for better source for these fish and once we do find a good source then extra fish will go away on that species.

If you have any more questions or concerns please feel free to ask, We are very transparent on what we do and how we do it and if there is a problem or issue we do our best to make it right for you,

You will find our customer service top knotch.
Like Mike (dr. reef) always says, Hes not in it for money, rather passion for the hobby he has.

 

[SpyC]

I appreciate the thought process on this and trying to ensure a healthy fish makes it to your customers, but some hobbyists are not in a positon to have an 2nd large or potentially territorial with the same species fish or able to rehome it. For me, that fish will have to be in a 6"x5" area in my sump for its entire life or sent to die in a petco tank. Neither are fair for the fish.

 

[blecki]

Don't think it's as much about fairness to the fish as it is about being far more cost effective to ship 2 fish than to ship a replacement for a DOA. Fair for the fish would be leaving it in the ocean so lets not pretend at altruism here.