Thoughts on Dr. Reef

[SpyC]

Those are all your personal experiences. Not everyone agrees to that as you can read through this thread.
We have praises after praises on our shipping and customer service. As you stated you wont be buying anymore so there is nothing further to discuss> Happy reefing.

Positive experiences don't mean the negatives don't have merit and treating it as such.

 

[SpyC]

For the ones wondering about our shipping and bagging here is a review from today.

Dr. Reefs Quarantined Fish

First timer in reef2reef so if I screw this up sorry. I wanted to put in a shoutout to Dr. Reefs. I ordered a bucket of stuff from fancy Clowns and Cardinals to cleanup crew members and shrimp. Everything was packaged great. Everything arrived alive. Everything was in awesome shape. The fish...

www.reef2reef.com

Futher more goto this section of r2r and read each and every review about Dr Reef and be your own judge.

Vendor Feedback

Lets hear your feedback from any reef-related vendors.

www.reef2reef.com

My last fish arrived last week. this is not the experience I had with the bagging.

Even though I will not be buying from again, you could have taken the opportunity to gather more information and possibly use that to modify QC when it comes to bagging fish or The overall experience. instead you opted to say my experiences do not hold any merit because others had good experiences.

 

[Dr. Reef]

This is a known common fact throughout the world, NO business can make EVERYONE happy. You are doing good If we can make most people happy, We are here for them. Others that are not happy will take their business somewhere else. This will happen even if the business bent over backwards for them.
We ship every order the same way for every customer and we get a million praises. Unfortunately cant change our procedure and bags that the whole world uses for 1 or few handful of people sepcially when the saying goes "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

 

[Genvid]

I have had several purchases from dr reef. Everything always arrived fine, once UPS delayed delivery for 3 days. The driver did not want to answer calls and left the box for 3 days in tragedy. You will not believe, when I received and opened the box all the fish were alive. I have had them in my aquarium for almost a year. You are probably just unlucky.

 

[mfinn]

So far my experiences with Dr Reef have been good.
Waiting on my second order.
The hardest part IMO is just waiting for the quarantine to be over so the fish can be shipped.

 

[SpyC]

I have had several purchases from dr reef. Everything always arrived fine, once UPS delayed delivery for 3 days. The driver did not want to answer calls and left the box for 3 days in tragedy. You will not believe, when I received and opened the box all the fish were alive. I have had them in my aquarium for almost a year. You are probably just unlucky.

I had a delay with the 2nd shipment of my order and Dr Reef said he would reach out to his contact which is really great. Then I never heard back from him with how the conversation went.

 

[SpyC]

This is a known common fact throughout the world, NO business can make EVERYONE happy. You are doing good If we can make most people happy, We are here for them. Others that are not happy will take their business somewhere else. This will happen even if the business bent over backwards for them.
We ship every order the same way for every customer and we get a million praises. Unfortunately cant change our procedure and bags that the whole world uses for 1 or few handful of people sepcially when the saying goes "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

My issue with the bagging is that you stated you changed the way it is done, but yet it matched my first order from 2022. This means either there was no change or an order slipped through the cracks and was not bagged to your new standards.

 

[LiquidSpace]

So far my experiences with Dr Reef have been good.
Waiting on my second order.
The hardest part IMO is just waiting for the quarantine to be over so the fish can be shipped.

Yes! I’m on week 3 and eagerly waiting.

 

[Wildreefs]

Check out tsmaquatics.com, I've gotten all of my fish from them, and all are healthy and thriving. They quarantine for 30 days and can order in what you want.

Yea ok

 

[EliMelly]

My issue with the bagging is that you stated you changed the way it is done, but yet it matched my first order from 2022. This means either there was no change or an order slipped through the cracks and was not bagged to your new standards.

Seems like you had a very one off experience. I’m sure Dr Reef made it right in the end and you didn’t lose money.

 

[SpyC]

Seems like you had a very one off experience. I’m sure Dr Reef made it right in the end and you didn’t lose money.

I had the same issues with three different orders and some had multiple shipments. this was not a one off imo. due to fish loss from being sent multiple fish when stating not to send them, I did lose money.

 

[MnFish1]

This is one of the reasons for the vendor forum - I wonder if some of the posts should be moved elsewhere over there? @Daniel@R2R

 

[EliMelly]

I had the same issues with three different orders and some had multiple shipments. this was not a one off imo. due to fish loss from being sent multiple fish when stating not to send them, I did lose money.

I sure would like to hear the other side. This is a vendor who has bent over backwards to help me in every aspect. I think it’s more likely you are just looking to complain potentially. I would love to hear from Dr reef.

 

[Dr. Reef]

Seems like you had a very one off experience. I’m sure Dr Reef made it right in the end and you didn’t lose money.

Eli thank you for your kind remarks. Problem is that people assume things. For some reason a person assumes that the whole world should change the bags this industry has been using for dacades. He thinks those bags are no good while entire world uses them with no issues. So it doesnt take a rocket scientist to realize where the problem is. Another thing is assuming we changed our bags. Yes i did mention on a forum that we have a new supplier and newer design of bags but he failed to read past his tunnel vision, I also mentioned right after that statement that we currently have about 1.5 yrs worth of old bags that needs to be rid of first before new bags come into play.

He will also never mention what he ordered from us. Lets break it down.

Nov 16 2022 He placed his first order.
Royal Gramma, tailspot blenny, Gladiator Clown, Black ice clown, citron goby, yellow tang, emerald crab, cleaner shrimp, exq firefish.

Mind you these were covid days and hawaii ban, yellow tangs were only coming from biota and were tiny weak transparent 1" fish. It was doa, along with royal gramma. We issued a refund for those 2 doa.
He claims all his fish comes in dead because bags are deflated, thats only 2 fish and 1 not on us (we dont breed yellow tangs).
If his statement was true then out of 9 livestock items only 2 were refunded/doa. His math doesnt add up.

Dec 23 2023
5 bangaii, Frostbite clown, firefish purple, yellow tang, lubbock wrasse, Davinci clown
No doas reported. Again his math does add up to his statements.

Dec 9 2024
Yellow coris, adorned wrasse, barnicle blenny, diamond goby
Adorned wrasse was not shipped, we held it back due to quality issue. He ordered 1 yellow coris, we shipped 2 as we know through experience they dont ship well. and to our experience they were doa. We replaced them.

Jan 29 2025 (He didnt place this order it was replacement)
missing adorned wrasse was shipped. On our expense, no doa reported. His math doesnt add up again

Mar 5 2025 (He didnt place this order we shipped his doa replacement)
we only owed him 1 yellow corris we shipped him 2.no email or claim of doa. Shipped at our expense.

So as you can see we shipped him 5 times with a total of 27 fish and only 3 fish have been reported doa.For which either a refund was issued or replacement were sent. Again his statements or the math dont add up.

27 fish 3 doa

People assume things and get stuck in their mentality that they cant see past that and or take statements out of context.

This person has a personal vendetta against us. We have all emails and records of refund or replacements. If needed we will not hesitate to post and make this very much public.

 

[EliMelly]

Eli thank you for your kind remarks. Problem is that people assume things. For some reason a person assumes that the whole world should change the bags this industry has been using for dacades. He thinks those bags are no good while entire world uses them with no issues. So it doesnt take a rocket scientist to realize where the problem is. Another thing is assuming we changed our bags. Yes i did mention on a forum that we have a new supplier and newer design of bags but he failed to read past his tunnel vision, I also mentioned right after that statement that we currently have about 1.5 yrs worth of old bags that needs to be rid of first before new bags come into play.

He will also never mention what he ordered from us. Lets break it down.

Nov 16 2022 He placed his first order.
Royal Gramma, tailspot blenny, Gladiator Clown, Black ice clown, citron goby, yellow tang, emerald crab, cleaner shrimp, exq firefish.

Mind you these were covid days and hawaii ban, yellow tangs were only coming from biota and were tiny weak transparent 1" fish. It was doa, along with royal gramma. We issued a refund for those 2 doa.
He claims all his fish comes in dead because bags are deflated, thats only 2 fish and 1 not on us (we dont breed yellow tangs).
If his statement was true then out of 9 livestock items only 2 were refunded/doa. His math doesnt add up.

Dec 23 2023
5 bangaii, Frostbite clown, firefish purple, yellow tang, lubbock wrasse, Davinci clown
No doas reported. Again his math does add up to his statements.

Dec 9 2024
Yellow coris, adorned wrasse, barnicle blenny, diamond goby
Adorned wrasse was not shipped, we held it back due to quality issue. He ordered 1 yellow coris, we shipped 2 as we know through experience they dont ship well. and to our experience they were doa. We replaced them.

Jan 29 2025 (He didnt place this order it was replacement)
missing adorned wrasse was shipped. On our expense, no doa reported. His math doesnt add up again

Mar 5 2025 (He didnt place this order we shipped his doa replacement)
we only owed him 1 yellow corris we shipped him 2.no email or claim of doa. Shipped at our expense.

So as you can see we shipped him 5 times with a total of 27 fish and only 3 fish have been reported doa.For which either a refund was issued or replacement were sent. Again his statements or the math dont add up.

27 fish 3 doa

People assume things and get stuck in their mentality that they cant see past that and or take statements out of context.

This person has a personal vendetta against us. We have all emails and records of refund or replacements. If needed we will not hesitate to post and make this very much public.

Listen Mike, you’ve been more than generous with me from QT my own fish for free that I am aware of your customer service. This is when I added a fish that was non QT so not even on you.

The only other vendor that comes even close to your service is Battlecorals. There’s a reason the two of you have the best reputation.

 

[LiquidSpace]

Here’s my newest Dr. Reef fish. It’s great, although slow to eat, which seems to be common with these guys. I have three tangs on order right now which I have been building up to for a bout a year, so I’m very excited.