LiveAquaria

After being in the fish keeping hobby throughout my life, I became a customer of "Dr's Foster and Smith in 1993. I received optimal sevice from the company for more than 26 years. Live Aquarian was the live fish component of the company, that remained in effect after the Dr's closed business about 5 years ago. Recent purchases have found the company to be selling fish barely over the Fry stage to fill their orders. " BUYER BE WARE".

I ordered BLONDE tux guppies. They are orange and white. See attached picture. I was sent RED tux guppies. The item number for the Blonde Tux Guppies is Item: CN-*******. I've included the bag label and the item number for the fish sent. Also the picture from their web site for the RED tux guppies. This isn't rocket science. Someone messed up. BUT Liveaquaria won't step up. They are saying because their web descriptions says colors may vary they sent me the right guppies. Its just guppies folks. Its not a kidney transplant. But come on, step up. We ALL make mistakes. Making mistakes isn't the problem. NOT accepting responsibility is unacceptable.

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.

My last order from liveaquaria was 100% dead, and a day late. 75 snails. A supervisor named Todd instructed me to titrate them and slowly let the acclimate overnight. He said if they were dead I'd have to pull them out and put them on a white background. They were obviously bad, and the bag smelled like death, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Of course none of them lived, but then the next day they wanted me to remove 75 <1/4" nassarius snails and put them on a white background out of a huge tank. Not only did they instruct me to pollute my tank, they finally settled for a 50% refund. Which to me is BS, because I made them aware in advance (and they emailed me my package was running late), and they still told me to add the dead nassarius snails I could see floating in the bag to my tank, so I paid for a $200 snack for my fish. Will never buy again.

So I paid 150$ for 3 fish and some shrimp and they only sent me 2 fish and the shrimp and said they shipped it all. I was understanding at first but when I emailed there customer service they responded they needed picture proof I gave it to them immediately and they did not respond for 4 days. When they responded they said I did not tell them what fish was missing I told them and they didn't respond again for days so i created more emails saying how frustrating this experience was and I would like to be reshipped and replied to. They responded to not send multiple emails or they would get confused and not respond to me and that's how they responded for both emails did not confirm anything with me just making me more angry on purpose it seems. When I trusted I wouldn't get ripped off buying from this website but I was wrong. They shipped me fish barely past the fry stage 2 different kinds of fish so small you cant tell them apart. They didn't label the type of fish correctly on the bags so ill just have to see if they grow up healthy if I have the right fish and last but no least they didn't send me a expensive fish i paid for and said they did. It was a absolute terrible experience buying from liveaquaria.com

I was told an order was cancelled and then it shipped. The one order I did receive was not like the WYSIWG. The medium size Gramma looks like it just hatched.

I ordered a freshwater goby and 6 panda cory around June 22nd. The goby arrived on time and in good health. However, the pandas were delayed. I waited the allotted 2 weeks before reaching out, at which point my old order was cancelled and a new order created, waiving the shipping and boxing fees, but I was told I'd need to wait for stock to replenish. Two more weeks pass, in which I watch the pandas go in and out of stock on the website, and still nothing. Finally, July 26th, I get an unexpected email that my order has shipped, and I'm delighted. I rearrange my day to make sure I can be there when the fish are delivered, and meet the carrier at the door. 4/6 were dead when I unboxed them. Not just dead, largely decayed. I don't believe they were only in their bags for 24 hours. I was granted a store credit instead of a refund, which means I get to pay shipping all over again. Overall extremely disappointed and will not shop here again.

Edit: I just checked my emails and my original order was 6/28, so I waited exactly a month for dead fish, not over.

I do not recommend Liveaquaria to anyone. I ordered 2 cichlids last Thursday. Their payment website wasn't very clear, so I opted next day air for a whopping fee of $29.99. Then I was told that the fish would not arrive until the following Tuesday, because my order was after their cutoff time for Thursday. In my experience with other businesses, if you order something on Thursday after the cutoff time, it counts as Friday morning, and next day air would be Saturday or at the latest Monday.
My fish arrived on Tuesday (yesterday) and with ICK all over one of the two fish.
1. the customer service representative was not helpful about the next day delivery. Whatever she said was going to stand.
2. I got a lame email back from customer service when I advised them that the fish arrived with ick.
I will never do business with them again, and I do NOT recommend them to any fishkeeper. You may as well throw away your money if you order from them, because they sell sick fish and charge an enormous amount for shipping.
By the way... this is very recent. I received the sick fish YESTERDAY!

They sent me an empty bag. Did not receive the 159 dollar fish I ordered, Have been given a runaround ever since