Advice? Livestock order from Petco.com?

Has anyone ever ordered any livestock from petco.com? If so, I'd be interested in hearing how it turned out. To reiterate, I'm not talking about purchasing livestock at a local Petco store.. those are terrible. I have heard that the online orders are fulfilled by an independent distributor and are never handled by Petco.. which is a plus.

I just ordered a cleanup crew from reefcleaners.org and unfortunately they don't carry peppermint shrimp (I'm looking for 10 of them). They are $9 each at liveaquaria and I'd either have to pay insane shipping or order a bunch of other stuff I'm not looking for right now in order to get free shipping. Alternatively I looked at petco.com and see they are $4.79 each and have free shipping on orders over $29.

In this particular instance I may be able to find some peppermint shrimp at either Iowa Seascapes or Adam's but I'm not sure. I'm wondering more generally about the petco.com option if I find myself in a situation where I simply can't find something available elsewhere or if petco.com's price is dramatically lower than anywhere else. If petco.com is actually sourced through a reasonable distributor then I think this may be a viable alternative. Again... all else being equal I would turn to Adam's, Iowa Seascapes, liveaquaria.com, vividaquariums.com, bluezooaquatics, or saltwaterfish.com before turning to petco.com and can't imagine many scenarios where I would ever purchase livestock from a physical PetCo store.

So... anyone have any experience with petco.com livestock orders?

Thanks!

 

Odds are its from Liveaquaria. Petco bought them out a couple years ago.

 

Iowa has peppermints by the dozen and keeps them hungry, they'll eat aptasia. I'd start with them.

 

I'd order them from Petco unless you want to pay a couple hundred bucks for that many. For that price if there's any deaths it won't bankrupt you.

 

Free shipping at 29 excludes fish.. Have to spend over 175

 

Nope.. I'm sitting at a checkout screen and see free shipping on my $47.90 order.

 

Wow I had no idea. I'm stunned Diver's Den hasn't been eliminated yet. That seems like a resource intensive operation that would have been axed by the evil corporate drones (like myself).

 

From my understanding petco bought them out, but the original owners still run it for petco.

 

Reeftopia is my "go to" place for peps (and clean up crew in general) although have ordered from Reeftopia as well and they are good but not as much variety of life to get (like peps & fish etc). They are dirt cheap on peps but seem to be out of stock right now but to order 10 with $40 shipping it would be $6.50/each ($25 + $40 shipping) so you would be better off with Petco if they indeed ship free (I've got to believe that is a system error). Having said that, for the small number you are after I agree with you that Seascapes etc would be a better local option.
Saltwater aquarium marine life from Reef Topia

The closest I've come to ordering from Petco is having the local store order things in - you could order without any shipping. I don't think they do that any more (ever since the fish manager Daniel left about 1-2 years ago).

 

Bought my peps from Iowa Seascapes, $6 each if you can sweet talk Tim into a discount, normally $9. Usually stock will show up Thursday around lunch time.
FWIW, of the three fish currently in my biocube, two are from Petco Jordan Creek (firefish and lawnmower) and the clown was bought from the short-lived Petland. I have probably bought 8 or so fish from other local (Des Moines) stores over the past 6 years and none of them made it longer than a couple months except for a six-line that was bomb-proof but not horrible house-sitter proof. I always make sure the fish have no visible signs or symptoms of problems and are active. The Petco fish will need a looooooong acclamation since the average salinity tends to be around 1.015.

 

Just be aware that if you buy peppermints from petco (live aquaria) that they will be SMALL. Always are. Some of the other sellers will have larger ones, thus the price difference. If you are ok with tiny peppermints, then save the bucks and buy from PetCo.

 

I have purchased online once from them before. It actually is not liveaquaria where they come from though. It is though the same place that their corals and fish in store come from. They are actually good quality in most cases before getting to the store.

I always stay local from my peppermint shrimp though and get them from Iowa Pet Foods and Seascapes.

 

Right, but PetCo and Live Aquaria are the same company with the same source as already mentioned. I've done a good number of large Live Aquaria group orders for the Cedar Rapids area in the past (with great success), and every time the peppermints were TINY, so being the same source, I would assume the same, thus my statement.

 

Well I ended up placing an order yesterday and it actually processed with free shipping -even though it sure seems like a system error to me since their website says free shipping on orders over $175. The peppermint shrimp are supposed to be delivered today so I'll see how tiny they actually are fairly soon. If they are ridiculously small I'll be heading over to Iowa Seascapes to pick up some bigger ones.

 

Soooo.... Pics?

 

They are indeed tiny. I'll get some more from Iowa Seascapes or Adam's. I'll see if I can snag a pic of one of them tonight.

 

Just wanted to warn you I have gotten pep from seascapes before and they didn't eat any aptasia at all... Actually one ate a $60 Rock flower... They will never enter my tank again lol I have also tried about 5 in a 90 gallon and they didn't eat a single aptasia