My (not so great) experience with Dr. Reef's Quarantined Fish

[Hankcorals]

You have rather exspensive tangs and other fish.. Just curious if you use a UV sterilizer in your main display or qt tanks? I havent been in the hobby but for a few years but seems like that is the way to go with tangs and other fish that are higher risk to get ich.. Pretty impressed with the DOA policy from this vendor btw

 

[SneaksMcdoogle]

My guarantee to you is you will have all your fish live and healthy by the end of all this at no cost to you.

I can attest that you guys have been great about the only issue Iv had. I will continue to use you. As a matter of fact I’m placing an order today

 

[JaimeAdams]

Prior to moving when I set my tank up I quarantined and treated all of my fish. After a couple of weeks they had ich. I know that it did not come from the fish. I did not qt Snails or coral. I know that it had to have made its way into my system on something that was non fish.

I understand what @Dr. Reef means when he says that if they had parasites in their austen they would know about it. I run a LFS. Ive been blamed once or twice for giving people velvet, but like him I can assure you that if I had something like that in my system I would surely know it.

This whole conversation is the main reason why we do not sell QTed fish at the store.

Stuff happens especially with shipping livestock sealed in plastic bags, but at the end of the day when I see posts like this I always see this vendor step up to go above and beyond.

 

[Lowell Lemon]

The biggest barrier to success is using UPS, FedEx, and USPS to ship any fish at anytime. Same day airport to airport shipping is the only way to mitigate fish loss. Shipping during cold weather or very hot weather raises the loss rate. Many LFS suspend shipping during those months in our area of live fish for a reason. I think expecting live delivery from a service that abuses packages every day is a recipe for disaster. Prophylactic treatment of fish is very difficult process and one that I was never good at. As as result I found other methods that had a higher success rate for me. I feel sorry for anyone that has a loss rate over 3% as it is unsustainable for the hobby and will lead to more collection bans in the future. This a strong argument for supporting local fish stores. Internet sales of fish and inverts is much higher risk proposition.

This is just my opinion after 25 or more years in the aquarium industry. The reduction of local aquarium stores is the reason for higher mortality rates not lower.

 

[KQuillan]

I don't have a dog in this fight, but if you had issues once, twice, then why keep ordering at the fish's expense? I think @Dr. Reef went above and beyond, several times, to do the right thing.

 

[Dr. Reef Verified Sponsor]

The guarantee and commitment is amazing. I had a great experience recently with Dr. Reef, although my order seemed to be inexplicably delayed by about 3 weeks after waiting for months. My coco worm also died inexplicably within a day or two while everything else was fine.

Still, the blame seems to be focused on the purchaser at the outset. Cut that portion out of the comment, and then I will appreciate the otherwise great response.

I edited it. Thank you for pointing that out

 

[Dr. Reef Verified Sponsor]

Major respect. So far all my fish from Dr. Reef have been great and they have been amazing communication wise. I’m sorry you went through this sounds really rough.
@Dr. Reef does the same deal apply to me?

I hope no one ever has to go through ich or velvet or any disease as a matter of fact.
I will always be willing to provide/help fellow hobbyist out in any shape or form.
By the end of the day I wanna see people with healthy livestock and to get best for their money.

 

[biokeeper]

I don't have a dog in this fight, but if you had issues once, twice, then why keep ordering at the fish's expense? I think @Dr. Reef went above and beyond, several times, to do the right thing.

I placed one order for $500 worth of fish. Once they shipped, I placed the second order of $500 worth of fish to start their QT process while my new shipment settled into the system. I had issues with the first order, at which point I had already spent $1,000+. After that, the subsequent orders were all done free of charge in order to replace any DOA.

I am not discrediting you at all. And yes you mentioned all postives. I respect that.

I mentioned on many different threads. Winter shipping is very harsh on livestock. That's where you had most doa.

Qted or not qted we don't feed them kryptonite. So any fish subjected to bad conditions will degrade over time. 6 months in someone's tanks we don't know what's been going on with these fish.

I will admit if it arrived looking like that then yes sure it would be my fault. But I can assure you it didn't.
Biota sends these yellow tangs to us. They are skinny and pale. But never infected. We keep our tank bred livestock in a separate warehouse than wild caught.
5 years of experience and moving around and perfecting things have thought us a lot how to avoid these kinda incidents.

Anyways like I mentioned before many times. I am not I it for money and as I stated above, we guarantee our stock (without really putting it in writing)

So I am willing to help you cure these fish and if you have any loses, doesn't matter even if it wasn't purchased from us. I will happily replace it with no cost to you.

You can choose to cure them yourself and I can provide medication for free or I can send you shipping label and you can send them back to me either or your choice.

My guarantee to you is you will have all your fish live and healthy by the end of all this at no cost to you.

I appreciate that guarantee, especially considering how much time and money I've spent on this process. I need to figure out how to move forward and what's the best option for the animals in the system. I'll shoot you an email and we can discuss there.

To be transparent, I haven't emailed Dr. Reef about this most recent issue prior to posting due to the fact that at this point I am well out of the 3 day DOA guarantee. By the time I noticed the yellow tang abnormalities and considered it may not be due to it being captive-bred, I was also outside of that timeframe. I wouldn't expect any vendor to offer any assistance outside of their written policies (which is completely in their right to do so), so that is why I didn't bother. I figured after all of my time/money spent, the least I could do is write a proper review of my experience to share with others.

I'll be sure to add to this post in the future with any further updates.

 

[badsmitty]

I had a terrible experience with doctor reef As well
He sent me an email saying my fish were ready so I hit him backup To find out when he was going to ship out my order and the guy went crazy on me cancel my order and start calling me all sorts of bad names
I've been in the hobby for over 30 years and this was the worst experience I've ever had

 

[Dr. Reef Verified Sponsor]

I had a terrible experience with doctor reef As well
He sent me an email saying my fish were ready so I hit him backup To find out when he was going to ship out my order and the guy went crazy on me cancel my order and start calling me all sorts of bad names
I've been in the hobby for over 30 years and this was the worst experience I've ever had

You dont need to be in hobby for 30 years to see through:

1. I never answer calls. Phone goes to a call center and all calls are recorded.

2. why would someone call names for asking when is my order going out. it doesnt make any sense.

3. Anyone that has had experience with Dr. Reef, good or bad they know I dont talk like that.

So lies on every level.




EDIT NOTE: we just checked and you never called us ever, just emails. So why dont you post the name calling emails? and or post screenshot of your call to me with day and time you called and I'll post the audio.


Just like I told you on the other forum I am not killing fish for you. So move on.

Dr. Reef's Quarantined Fish Order

Ordered from Dr reef / Mike Worst experience of mine in 30 years Put in an order on March 16th They finally ship out things I didn't order on April 22nd I received NOTHING that I ordered after Mike assured me that he had what I ordered in stock After I complained about the order Mike...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[brandon429]

I felt the op downplayed any risk they presented to disease in the system (90/10 assessment) while playing up the Dr Reef certainty and they never provided a full tank picture so we could see a live rock system that may have been never fallowed along with other additions not fallowed. Only snippets from the fish picture showed the tank...

 

[biokeeper]

You have rather exspensive tangs and other fish.. Just curious if you use a UV sterilizer in your main display or qt tanks? I havent been in the hobby but for a few years but seems like that is the way to go with tangs and other fish that are higher risk to get ich.. Pretty impressed with the DOA policy from this vendor btw

Unfortunately I did not have a UV sterilizer set up yet. It was something I planned on possibly doing in the future but was not in any big rush, due to all of these animals being pre-quarantined. Who knows, doing so may have kept the diseases/parasites at bay at a more manageable level for the fish.

I felt the op downplayed any risk they presented to disease in the system (90/10 assessment) while playing up the Dr Reef certainty and they never provided a full tank picture so we could see a live rock system that may have been never fallowed along with other additions not fallowed. Only snippets from the fish picture showed the tank...

I'm not really sure what your point is here, as I think you misunderstand the term "fallow" or how it relates to this. No one has asked me for any full tank shots nor do I really see what good it would do. I think I've provided plenty of relevant info but I'm willing to provide more if specifically requested.

Edit* As I just posted this, I see that the thread has been moved to the appropriate forum and now will only be a back and forth between Dr. Reef and I. My apologies for responding to those above who can no longer reply.

I'll be emailing Dr. Reef tonight to come up with a game plan. I've been a bit mentally drained from the whole situation and stuck in a bit of a standstill as far as how I want to proceed.