LA Reefs Review- A+++++

[catran]

Let me first start by informing all that I am an expert in shipping. I have been in the business for 23 years. As a result, I am very critical of poor packaging.
This is my first order with LA Reefs and I didn't know what to expect. I thought that I would post this so everyone generally understands what kind of experience to expect. Of course, every order will be different depending on what is in stock and what you get, but here is my opinion of my overall experience.

The order- LA Reefs had a good selection of the items I wanted. I was very happy to see that he had small $10.00 frags of a variety of corals that I wanted, so I placed an order for 7.
Orange Monti
Superman Monti
OSU Beaver Zoa's
Red Stinger Zoa's
Blueberry Goni
UFO Landings Chalice
Green Swamp Chalice

As soon as my PayPal was approved, I received an email from Louis that my order had shipped. Very good job with the fast processing.

Later that night, I received an email from Louis informing me that 2 of my frags did not look like the ones pictured online, and he was refunding my money. I was a little dissapointed but then I noticed that he said he shipped them anyway! Great communication with the customer.

Next day, I received my order:

The box was the appropriate weight(thickness), able to withstand substantial abuse -we all know these boxes are beat up.
The quality cooler inside housed the heat pack and the frags were in HEAT SEALED PLASTIC BAGS! NO rubber bands! Oh, what a concept. I wish everyone would ship this way. All too often, I have received livestock with water leaking everywhere. This also ensures that the bags won't leak foreign water into your tank while floating them. Everything was in excellent shape. There was a summary of my order and general acclimation guidelines for corals, macroalgae and invetebrates.

Upon removal, I discovered I had 8 items. I counted them over a couple of times before I discovered that one of them was labeled freebie. Cool! Thanks Louis!
The Superman Monti that was refunded was a little light, I'm sure that it will color up in no time. The UFO Landings that was refunded, well, I can't find anything wrong with it yet, the only difference is that it has more eyes than promised. Everything else looks great including my freebie monti!

Overall, I'm sitting here believing that I got more than I paid for. I was excited to see my order and very pleased (almost guilty) to have gotten more. Not many online sites make you feel that way. I am already planning my next order.

Awesome job LA Reefs! I am very proud that you are a sponsor of Reef Sanctuary!

P.S. Don't forget that Reef Sanctuary members get a 15% discount with coupon code RS15

 

[nanoreefing4fun]

nice review !

 

[WVUReefer]

My order was the complete opposite. After spending 2 weeks waiting for my order, with no communication about a delay, I finally got them to send my order to me. These frags were TINY. I don't know if you can even call them frags, maybe mini frags. One frag arrived DOA and I still have not recieved a response from lareefs. When I say DOA, I mean completely bleached, no polyps, I mean nothing. I had no communication from them about my order being delayed or about my DOA. I am not a pleased buyer to say the least.

The corals were packaged nicely and labeled which was a plus.

I'm glad your order was great, but mine was awful and I will never order from them again or recommend them to anyone.

 

[WVUReefer]

Also..my blueberry gono is brown and white..99% it is not going to make it..when I saw this frag on ebay i was excited..not so much now that I have it...

 

[catran]

My blueberry gono was blue. I got everything I wanted and more. I paid for and expected small. The one frag I got that was lightly bleached was refunded before it was even shipped! They could just have not shipped it but I'll save it! Sorry you had a bad order.

 

[WVUReefer]

Yeah it happens..I'll see if I can get a pic so you can see...but t is definately not what I expected.. I mean frag size is to each his own..just don't send me a dying/dead coral..My money means something to me..and I get a brown coral that is not even showing signs of life ..no thanks..I can be a very loyal costumer when shown respect..

 

[catran]

Sorry, I can't speak for them. I can only talk about what I received. Again, sorry you had a bad time.

 

[catran]

Thanks Glenn!

 

[catran]

Oops, I couldn't edit my original post but, the frag I thought was a freebie was actually my Orange Monti. The freebie was a frag with Eagle Eyes Zoa's- 7 heads. I paid $10.00 for a rock with 3 heads at a LFS sale.

 

[LAReefs]

Also..my blueberry gono is brown and white..99% it is not going to make it..when I saw this frag on ebay i was excited..not so much now that I have it...

Hi WVUReefer. My sincerest apologies about the order. If you can PM me with your order # or eBay name if you had won the items off eBay I can take care of the problem. Normally, if we don't respond within 24 hours the message was likely lost somewhere in cyberspace.

Our policy is to never ever send a coral if we believe it is dying. If a coral looks different but otherwise healthy we send the coral anyways but we will issue a refund. For example, if the Gonipora had healthy extension but looked a bit brown we might send it along with a 100% refund and an apology. If we notice tissue loss or full bleaching then we hold it back. There is no point in sending a coral that will die soon. It eliminates the chance of recovery to near zero, and 99% of the time a refund will have to be issued anyways. Most importantly, it's bad ethics to send anything unhealthy. In those instances we send the refund before shipment and then add a freebie. This is to keep the number of corals in the shipment the same and thus it keeps the shipping cost per coral the same.

We will be offering large sized pieces in the future. When I started LA Reefs I had the goal of trying to keep the average order under $100 while having a good number of corals in the order. Basically to have 8 to 10 corals for $100 rather than 2 or 3 for $100. I was in college when I started LAReefs.com and never liked the fact that my orders were between 2 and 3 hundred dollars. So what I aimed to do was offer healthy and beautiful corals vis-a-vis the limited edition and expensive corals. Both have a place in our hobby as I've also bought a few $100 1/2" frags myself, and was more than excited to acquire it. I doubt you'll ever see a frag go over $40 on our site though. This is the model we've been running for a while and it seems people are happy with it (most of our rare stuff is sold out from our site within a day by returning customers.) However,we will likely start offering larger pieces for the reefers who desire it and don' mind paying a little extra. There are things we will never ever skimp and that's the health of the corals in our system and the shipping practices we implement. Our boxes are always actual Styrofoam containers and not sixes pieces cut from Styrofoam sheets which don't always seal correctly.

I thank you both for the review. It's always helpful and never hurtful to get honest opinions from both sides.

 

[Frankie]

Sounds like LAreefs pulls through! Well done

I just want to take this moment to start a conversation about frag size. Usually frags are between 3/4" to 2". The standard is 1". If you take a tape measure and look at what 1" looks like it is pretty small. That's why there called frags.
Colony's on the other hand can be between 2" and 4". Sometimes you score and they come in 5-6".

 

[catran]

Good point Frankie. Here's my update:
Half of what I ordered were zoa's and sold on a "x" number of polyp basis. The others- a 3/4" monti, a 3/4" chalice, a 1/2" chalice, and a 2" chalice. All but one of the zoa's (eaten by one of my crabs I think!) are doing great. They refunded 2 additional frags and sent them because they were bleached, one of those are doing great, the other one didn't make it because I had it in a tank with a 1 bulb light. Once it got worse, it was beyond saving but, that was my fault.