LiveAquaria

They sent me over $200 of dead items that arrived a day late and on Xmas Eve. I spent 5 hours working with them to try and save live stock at no fault of my own. They got MY money. I got a wasted Xmas eve that I should have been spending with my family. Went to use my store credit and they told me it had expired. Now that I worked with them, thy can't work with me. Very rude customer service that is replies every few days. Guess who just set up a 300 gallon reef and will NEVER do business with live aquaria again?

I have been ordering from Live Aquaria for years and have always had a great experience until yesterday. The crab literally arrived in pieces. PIECES! Are you kidding me?

I have been running a reef tank for years and am not new to the hobby. I temp/drip acclimated like I always do and dropped it into the tank. Woke up this morning not even 24 hours later and the clean up crew was going to work.

Not happy at all and I don't plan on ever shopping from Live Aquaria again. The quality has gone completely downhill. Not sure if its new ownership or just lack of caring, but the quality is showing. Stay with a LFS or a very reputable online dealer. Live Aquaria isn't it anymore.

If I could give negative stars I would. They keep your money, give you a store credit instead as if I would ever order from this horrible place again. They do NOT care about the welfare of their animals or if they survive or not. They even shipped mine in -5F temps! The water my fish arrived in smelled putrid. I find it hard to believe they were alive at shipping time. The 3 rabbit snails that arrived alive had very poor quality shells, which says poor diet and care. Buyer beware! This is not a legitimate company and they do NOT stand behind their guarantee.

I have ordered for over 20 years and the past 3 the quality of fish has declined drastically. Nothing ever dies until recent years. Such a shame. They must have cganged where they buy from and their practices. My guess is they are using dealers that poising the area to catch the fish more easily. Those fish always end up dying in a feww weeks in captivity which is what is happening to mine.

Done with this site. Order fish then when they get around to shipping them unless you order from their diver dens chances are you won't get fish. They oversell their inventory and leave you expecting fish, but nothing arrives. Their emails abut shipments never arrive, so you have to contact their help on website. Closing my account and looking elsewhere

My son ordered 24 fish for me. They came today poorly packaged in which the fish were jostled around in the box. Out of 24 fish only 8 were alive. Two of those 8 obviously have ick, there is no way they did not notice this yesterday during packaging. Treating my 125 gallon tank for ick now and hoping that my previous fish do not die. I would never consider getting fish from liveaquaria.com ever again. I can get diseased fish locally a lot cheaper.

I ordered three fish and 5 snails and calcium test from them. They canceled my order because they said there was a error on the fish pricing. They did ship the calcium kit but charged me more for shipping. It would have been less for combined order. Also slow shipping.

I called to find out the status of part of my order. Was told it was cancel because it was out of stock. Yet when i checked a few days ago it showed one of the fish still available. I told the customer rep that I would never buy from them again. She actually got sarcastic. I have bought fish from them for years. Definitely gone down hill.

Will not be ordering again, extremely frustrated. Ordered 6 male cobra guppies, all arrived sick with split tails, cottonmouth, at least two females, two doa. Shipped yesterday arrived today, the health of the fish makes me think they were shipped sick. Extremely low quality cobras at that. They've definitely solidified my lack of interest in ordering fish out. I'd rather drive the two hours to a quality specialty fish store that won't run the risk of further disease in my aquariums. Waste of money, and no point in store credit if I won't be ordering again. Ridiculous.

70% of the shrimp arrived dead. One day later almost all of the rest of them are now dead in my tank. The water in the bags was freezing when the shrimp arrived. Thin cardboard box with a bit of newspaper and two small and useless heat packs. Why do you ship shrimp in the winter in this pathetic packaging? Order number A*******

The water in my tank is perfect - I have had shrimp for years - and I followed best practices unloading the few shrimp that temporarily survived the shipping.

My experience with LiveAquaria was not positive. Fish that arrived alive, but sick. (Order number A*******) I am an experienced aquarist with five large tanks up and running beautifully. My experience with other online fish companies has been positive (Aquatic Arts) so I tried Live Aquaria. I quarantined the sick fish and tried to treat the ich, but they all died. LiveAquaria gave me a store credit for three of the nine fish that died because I could not take photos of the other six. They had decomposed to the point of mush. A store credit is not helpful to me - why would I order more fish from a company that sent me nine sick ones?

DO NOT BUY FISH FROM HERE!I purchased 5 fish from here.experienced aquarist.fish were quarintined.2 fish died within 7 days.sent in the forms for the guarantee and NEVER got a response.Another 2 died soon after.only have 1 left after spending so much money on fish and the insane shipping cost.Also,website clearly states a size range.We purchased bigger fish because if not they would be eaten by the other fish and we received all tiny tiny baby fish forcing them to be quarintined for years had they not all died anyway.BUYER BEWARE!

Since posting this review, today Dec 8,2022, LiveAquaria has contacted me and offered a complete refund for my order. My photo of the damaged FedEx box wrapped in a plastic bag and then re-boxed I suspect had a lot to do with it.

Can I do -5 stars?
I bought five Shubunkins for my pond. Looked a little sickly. Quarantined. On day 7, three of them died. No refund issued. Put the last two in the pond and now after 7 weeks they are gone.
Also bought five Ryukins for my tank. Also looked sickly. Two died on second day of quarantine and got a refund for them. One by one two others developed white fuzzy patches. I isolated and medicated them. Both slowly died. We'll see what happens to fish #5.
Thankfully nothing spread to the fish I already had!
Fish from my LPS don't die like this. Wish I knew not to buy from Liveaquaria.

3/11/19 Update of My Review:
I was contacted by a very helpful service rep (Eric) who offered to assist with the issue noted in original review. Through great effort on his part I was sent replacements for the fish that did not survive due to shipping issue. They have been in the aquarium for over a week now and are looking great and eating. Giving credit where credit is due... Live Aquaria did step up to address my complaint and make things right. Thanks again Eric!

2 orders months apart not shipped due to covid 19. Third shipment fish were dead upon arrival. Can't get a refund only store credit. Don't have available "in stock" marine fish.

They used to be highly reliable, tops.
Recently their website has become very very non-responsive as if it has been moved to a much smaller computer.
Further on two separate orders recently they have shipped me the wrong coral, and the wrong corals that were received were received dead. It makes you wonder what is going on. Is it temp staffing due to covid-19 or is there a more serious issue? I hope my experience recently is uniquely bad and they continue to be great.

UPDATE a third ordered coral came in today. It is ealthy, just what I ordered and AWESOME. Ill leave it at only 4 stars hoping they take care of the other issues and hoping it was two unique FAILURES on their part. I hope.

I have been ordering fish from liveaquaria since the 90's.
Over the years I received fish that were fairly healthy and in good condition.
However, last 6-7 years I have been receiving fish that are either sick with red sores, emaciated, and/or not eating.
I have mentioned this to them several times.
Yes they gave me refund every time fish died but they also charged twice the price of my local fish store.
I order from them because of availability
It's heartbreaking to see these beautiful creatures treated this way
I don't know what happened to Liveaquria,
Perhaps they need to change their supplier and get a supplier closer to US or a supplier that handles these fish with more care.
I have $108 credit with them for fish that died within couple of days of arrival. Actually they looked like they were going to die as soon I saw them. They did not pass quarantine.
They did not survive quarantine box in the reef tank,
I even risked putting them directly in the reef tank with other healthy, fairly peaceful fish. The angelfish, anthias, etc just dies after couple of days
Some of these fish were from Diver's Den.
I will not order any fish from them even though I have $108 in credits.
I don't want to keep explaining to my children why their pet fish died.

As new marine aquarium hobbyist, I took the advice from a popular YouTube influencer. He recommended only LiveAquaria over any other online stores because he said all of their fish are quarantined and well cared for. Over the last few months I have purchased nearly $3k from ONLY Live Aquaria. Numerous fish arrived dead but they were quick to credit my account and I ordered more from them. Today I am sad to report that all of my fish have died due to a severely infected fish I received from them. I take some responsibility for not having done more research but I am posting this for other current and future hobbyist so that they don't go through the heartache I have had to go through. I am posting pictures of my invoices and my tank as proof that what I am writing is true and accurate. Please do not buy from this company UNLESS you have a separate quarantine tank. This is a tough lesson to learn.

ZERO STARS WOULD BE MY REAL RATING!

My first order from them was for 2 fish. When the shipment came there was only one fish that had a bad case of ich. I called the and they shipped out the 2nd one the following week. I paid for a medium sized fish and received a SMALL saltwater butterfly fish that would never eat and eventually died... goodby $70!
I had put a notification request for an Australian Harlequin Tusk fish. I had been wanting to get one for a while and had a hard time finding one. So... I thought I'd give them another chance. I ordered a Juvenile/Medium which was advertised as 2 1/2" - 4 1/2" for $225. When it came in as a 2" fish I called and complained. This was the response:

"Thank you for the photos with measurement. As the item was a Juvenile Medium it is under the small Adult size stated of 2 1/2 - 3 1/2 inches for the adult small it would be more 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 inches for the Juvenile medium. We have submitted to update the page showing the juvenile sizes. Our apologies it is the correct size."

So... they get away with changing the advertised size after the fact? And I should be OK with it!
The fish developed popeye 2 days later, and barely eats. I asked them to extend the warranty. I received it on 7/22/******* and the 7 day warranty covered it to 7/13/2022. Here's the response:

"We have extended your warranty through 07/14/22"

An extension of 1 day! How generous!
I will copy and paste this everywhere I can!