LiveAquaria

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.

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.

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.

Always satisfied with my purchases. Delivery on time, packaged with care. Beautiful fish and inverts every time.

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 have ordered 3 times fish and inverts online. Shipping is super quick (less than 24hrs), packaging is very pro and fish are well protected. Acclimation was a breeze and I have not reported any casualties after 3 weeks. Will definitely come back. Thanks!

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

I have tried to work with Liveaquaria but they really just dont care. This week was my 72nd order relating to my saltwater tanks. They say they have fish in stock only to be told days later they dont. They hold on to your money for weeks just "in case" they get a shipment in. Saltwater fish arent cheap and it could be hundreds at times. They still advertise the same fish they say they don't have! This has happened repeatedly to me over the last year. I decided to try one more time and guess what... yet again. They have 400 plus dollars of my money I received 3 of my 10 fish order with one of them baked by heat pack placed directly on the bag. A second fish arrived in poor shape which I notified per their messaging system along with dead one. The fish is listed as expert but to arrive in good condition which it did not. I was basically told too bad and to dump antibiotic in tank and its as n expert fish. Now I am successfully caring for 12 of these leopard wrasses and am aware of all the issues that arise with them but I cant raise a half dead wrasse back. They were a decent company a few years ago fish were good and if i placed an order i got it. NOT NOW. Their so called customer service people are rude and could care less. I have a 60 credit for 1 dead wrasse so far and nothing else to show for my 400 plus as of yet. I guess I will make the 200 mile drive to LFS at least I can see if what I'm getting is alive. Some 60 fish later I'm done stocking my aquariums from Liveaquaria. 1.5 years ago I had nothing but good things to say about them. Not now.

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.

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 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!

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.