Thoughts on Dr. Reef

[Dr. Reef]

I was wondering how the QT fish were from Dr. Reef. I'm trying to get a Midas Blenny and Royal Gramma, I just want to make sure the general consensus is that they're healthy fish upon arrival. I know he only does 2 weeks of QT and that has me skeptical.

To OP we will ship you the 2 fish Midas and Royal gramma for free. Please email us at [email protected] so you can find out for yourself first hand.

 

[ScottieB]

I just got my order of 7 fish 2 weeks ago, they are all fat, healthy and were dropped right into my 300g stocked tank. They were all eating pellets from the auto feeder almost immediately.

The customer service is top notch and unheard of in this business. I’m already planning another order and would encourage anyone considering it to try them out. It does take time to QT fish and arrange shipping but you know nothing good happens in a hurry in our hobby.

The fact that they are replying to this thread the way they are is a testament to their customer service.

 

[RedReefer]

Dr Reef is awesome. I've ordered all kinds of fish and inverts with no issues. Most of the fish are still doing well after 5 years.

 

[DED65]

I was going to order fish from Dr. Reef a couple of years back. He was backordered quite a bit and I ordered through another vendor. As I started reading this post, I was thinking "boy, I am glad I went through another vendor"! I came back when Dr. Reef posted his replies and his makes a lot of sense. He is doing more to keep his customers happy than any other vendor that I have seen. Awesome!

 

[cdnco2004]

Anyone posted bad experience prior to post #32, I am offering $200 in livestock with free shipping.
Email us at [email protected] with your post # from this thread and we will happily give you livestock worth $200 and free shipping just as a gesture of good faith and honest business practices, Maybe we had a bad shipment. Please mention in your email what went wrong so we can fix and and give you a better service/livestock that you deserve.

As I always say, I dont do this for money but rather the passion I have for this hobby. Like to see healthy and diseasefree fish in every tank.

Dude.... you can't beat that customer service.

 

[jstephens1]

Dr reef is great used him for 4 years and never a single problem

 

[smitten with ocean life]

i definitely think that you're going above and beyond, dr reef!

 

[Dr. Reef]

Guys, I am not perfect, there are sometimes issues. Some on our end and some beyond our control, specially when it comes to ups and handling of boxes and delays etc but the main thing for me is to man up and own it. If something happens bad due to our mistake, we will own it and will replace your entire loss of livestock even if you didnt buy from us.
We want your dollar to get the best it can, so If clients tell me the issues I promise we will fix them and compensate.

 

[EliMelly]

Dr. Reef is one of the best vendors out there if not the best. Their customer service is fantastic now and they always go above and beyond. I’ve had some mistakes of different wrasses being shipped or mix ups with other fish and I’m always told to keep the fish and sent a new one free of charge with shipping covered.

When he says it’s because he loves it he means it. At this point Dr. Reef has even sent me fish before I paid due to the relationship.

I will always go to Dr. Reef if they have what I’m looking for and strongly suggest you do the same.

 

[cdnco2004]

No one is perfect. Just do your best to do right by your customers I think is all anyone can ask.

 

[TARHEEL78]

As he has stated just a few posts above, Dr Reef is not perfect. I had an order from him I wasn't thrilled with as they were behind tiny and DOA. He made it right with another shipment and I would buy from him again. I will say you should make it clear what size fish you want and be willing to wait for them.

 

[Dr. Reef]

We added a question at checkout l, what size customers are expecting and we try to match as close to it. We learnt that after our mistakes of not asking and keeping things at default medium.
Some people idea of medium is not what we see or get.
So now the notes and questions section is there for us to get close to.

 

[SpyC]

For my orders, the fish that lived looked great and did well. Unfortunately my issues are poor packing where multiple bags were leaking, not fully sealed, corners were not protected so fish got stuck in them. Seems there is a dastic range is bagging quality where the larger fish are well bagged and packed while the smallers ones are, imo, tossed in a bag and told 'good luck'.

If packing was consistent, I'd give Dr Reefs another try, but I'm not going to keep sending fish to their doom.

 

[Dr. Reef]

For my orders, the fish that lived looked great and did well. Unfortunately my issues are poor packing where multiple bags were leaking, not fully sealed, corners were not protected so fish got stuck in them. Seems there is a dastic range is bagging quality where the larger fish are well bagged and packed while the smallers ones are, imo, tossed in a bag and told 'good luck'.

If packing was consistent, I'd give Dr Reefs another try, but I'm not going to keep sending fish to their doom.

we use an automatic convayor belt sealer. Its actually a potato chip bag sealer. It fills Oxygen and seals all bags in a convayor belt setting.. We stole that idea from a very big name brand coral and fish grower. (wont say name as they didnt even want to share any info when I asked them)
So all bags are sealed by a machine. only bags we seal our self are clipped by a susage clipping machine which is also automatic. We twist the bags neck and place it in a machine that clips it automatically.
But point noted and will see what we can do to seal the edges some how.

 

[braaap]

I really like my fish from Dr.Reef and their customer service. I don’t like that they just don’t ship items because they don’t look healthy and they don’t tell you until it’s too late. I’ve corrected that with them and told them ship everything or nothing. I’m not paying shipping again because they left out an item.

All my fish arrived healthy and are still alive and thriving. My corals did not. They were all dead due to poor packaging. I wouldn’t order coral from them again.

Also I wouldn’t trust humble fish. That’s one of the top level cults of reef keeping.

 

[Ryan Souza]

Ordered from dr reef a couple months ago, anthias in best shape I've seen from shipping, all anthias alive and well zero problems, lost a couple damsels from damsel aggression in the first couple weeks. Total of 15 fish, would recommend to anyone on the fence. Only downside was a little bit of a wait as expected with qt fish, recieved 4 extra fish on my order. Will be buying again and recommend to anyone on the fence.

 

[Dr. Reef]

Here a video of that machine in action.

 

[Dr. Reef]

Also industry standard is 2 mil bag. We special order and get our bags made at 4 mil.
here is a video of our bags (from manufacturer)

 

[thedon986]

While I have not directly ordered from them, from what I have read on these forums from those that have.....

Most receive the wrong fish, which then your stuck with. DOA policy has recently changed which is not very customer friendly. Many, many shipping issues, and many dead fish. It also seems to take a very long time to source the fish sometimes.

MOST receive the wrong fish? Sounds like a bit of an exaggeration, unless you have proof? I have two orders with Dr. Reef for 10 fish. My one DOA was a copperband, so not totally surprising. I did not receive any wrong fish but I did have 1 fish withheld and refunded as they weren't fit for shipping. I was able to use my store credit for 6 months of Trident reagent for the cost of shipping. Going forward I do plan to QT my own fish once I have a setup for it, mostly to save money and to avoid shipping fish more than necessary.

Arrived just fine:
-Melanurus wrasse
-Foxface
-Tomini
-Two firefish
-Two clowns
-Tailspot
-Springeri damsel
-Pistol shrimp (watchman was withheld had to get locally)

Edit to add: Dr. Reef also let me delay my arrival of my second order because the watchman I bought locally (claimed QT by the LFS) brought in flukes and several fish were displaying symptoms. So he held my order more than a month to let me get through multiple rounds of Prazi.

 

[Dr. Reef]

MOST receive the wrong fish? Sounds like a bit of an exaggeration, unless you have proof? I have two orders with Dr. Reef for 10 fish. My one DOA was a copperband, so not totally surprising. I did not receive any wrong fish but I did have 1 fish withheld and refunded as they weren't fit for shipping. I was able to use my store credit for 6 months of Trident reagent for the cost of shipping. Going forward I do plan to QT my own fish once I have a setup for it, mostly to save money and to avoid shipping fish more than necessary.

Arrived just fine:
-Melanurus wrasse
-Foxface
-Tomini
-Two firefish
-Two clowns
-Tailspot
-Springeri damsel
-Pistol shrimp (watchman was withheld had to get locally)

Thank you for your post.
We ship about 80-100 orders per day so about 500-600 order per week. We may have anywhere from 0 to 3 complaint of wrong fish. And 90% of these fish mistakes are not in the species of the fish itself but likely in gender of the fish.
Highest mistakes on gender is tank bred mandarins. We buy them directly from Biota and they send us them indivdually packed and clearly labelled MALE and FEM on the bags. We put them in 2 separate systems marked Male and Fem on our tanks. They are so tiny sometime i am sure biota cant even distiguish between them and neither can we.
Second biggest gender problem is Ruby red dragonette and 3rd Melanurus wrasse. We were sold lanur wrasse from a wholesaler instead of melanurus and we quit buying from them.
Copperbands have a bad rep of not eating frozen and we changed the wholesaler as well. Now we get them from Philippines and they are the best we have seen in the industry.
Chromis used to have internal uronema and we went to Kenya and import them from Africa and we have not seen 1 case of uronema anymore.
Lastly were lyratail and we found a very good source from Fiji and that issue went away. They do die in shipping so we always sent extra to compensate.