So I have been doing a lot of thinking and researching and have decided to add a couple of fish to my aquarium, a yellow head jawfish

and golden midas blenny (from africa).

I looked around and found that aquacon had both and at a very reasonable price. I ordered and received a confirmation e-mail today. It basically said that my Canary Blenny

and my Golden Head Sleeper Goby

were ready to be shipped. (Compare pics at leisure)

Now it didn't necessarily bug me that they had advertised that they had a fish in stock when they didn't, or that they were about to ship out similar looking fish hoping I wouldn't notice, or even when the guy on the phone tried to tell me that the canary blenny is another name for a midas blenny and golden head sleeper goby is another name for a yellow head jawfish (imagine my surprise when I would have tried to force it into it's barnacle burrow and it freak out), what really p'd me off was when I mentioned that I thought the canary blenny was different and thought it was poisonous, he assured me that it was not poisonous because midas blennies are not poisonous.

On their website, the Midas Blenny and the Canary Blenny are side by side, and it does in fact mention that Canary Blennies are venomous. I could care less about myself, I probably deserve to get bitten by something, but what if my son stuck his hand in there and got bitten, minuscule chance I know, but the principle is there.
Needless to say I canceled my order.

omg what jerks!!

I would be so pissed!

Someone mentioned their name, Aqua-con, is fitting. However, I have no personal experience.

how do u think they got there name?

I do and they are horrible. They steal photos send other corals and if you do get the same coral you ordered it will be of poor quality. Buyer be wary this is a bad place to go for fish/coral.

You should poop in a bag and tell them it's toll house cookies and that the corn is actually white chocolate

When you combine the words "aqua" and "con" together, it does make you think. And knight is right about them stealing other folks photos.

Whats funny is I ordered over the phone, and we had a discussion about whether to get a pearly jawfish or a yellow headed jawfish, and also I had wanted to make sure the midas blenny was the one from africa and not from the indo-pacific, and it was the same guy I talked to the second time.


lol I ended up going with blue zoo, hopefully a better experience.

Sorry to hear that. At least when I got screwed by Marine Gardens they sent the correct fish. This is one reason why using latin names benefits both sides of the relationship.



Yup. They have been threatened legally with this for years. I guess nobody cares enough to want to pay a lawyer to follow through with it.

They've stolen numerous photos from friends of mine (Leonard Ho, Greg Schiemer, among others) and used them without permission or attribution. I'm amazed they're still in business.

EDIT: They've got several of Hiroyuki Tanaka's and Scott Michael's photos on there too. Lame!

yellowhead jawfish are sweet, lots of personality.

[Edit - sorry should have read the rest, got off track with cool fish photos]

I actually almost changed my mind and got a black cap jawfish, I hadn't done a lot of research on it. Now that I look blue zoo says it gets up to 8 inches and live aquaria says 4. Pretty big difference. I think the black cap only gets to 4-4.5 in captivity, but would feel weird buying a fish I don't know much about

Agree 100%

Granted, but there is a pretty big difference between the personalities and looks of these fish, one would hope that a person would know the difference between different types of his own product.
Actually come to think about it, that comment bears no relevance to this problem. I would have still tried to have ordered an Ecsenius midas, and he still would have tried to send me Meiacanthus oualanensis, and I would have ordered an Opistognathus aurifrons and he still would have tried to send me a Valencienna strigata. Shady is shady in any language

Sorry to hear of your expereince. I got nailed by them as well a few months back. DOA's and the corals looked really bad. They would charge for a 10 polyp frag and 4 polyp frag would arrive. Only after frustrating negotitations where they willing to credit me back for the dead or missing livestock. I'll never deal with them again.

Take a screen-shot of the page and then send them an invoice for the use of the photos, along with an additional "fee" due to copyright violation.

I even think that they stole a TOTM photo from here a while back and use it on their site. All I know is the phone number puts them right down the street from in an industrial area by me. I have mentioned the site to a LFS and the reaction was "STAY AWAT FROM THAT GUY". I guess the LFS owner knows him and said he is a rotten person. I remember a thread where someone bought purple death palys from him and got plain old brown zoas, not even palys, zoas. He tried to say it was the costumers lighting. What a jerk. Also notice that the livestock list never changes. Everything is always available in multiple sizes. Stay Away!

Click here and go to coral packages, it wont let me link the photo. that was a past TOTM pic, DEC 2008. How cheap!
http://www.aquacon.com/saltwater_invertebrates.html

It is amazing that he is still in business..

If you are looking for a yellowhead jawfish, Sealife Inc normally has them in stock (just looked, they have single and mated pairs in stock). They are a fantastic company to deal with. That is where my current jawfish is from:

They stole my mermaid fan picture!

Compare Mine:
http://reefcleaners.org/components/com_vir...18641074dd0.jpg

To theirs:
http://www.aquacon.com/images/mermaidplant1.jpg

Not even my best picture. I am flattered a bit to be honest. I am horrible with a camera.

Wow, so they steal pics from other vendors as well as members on here. Its funny how the one I mentioned above cant be linked by right clicking.

It's relevant to this part:

LOl I dare them to steal one of my pics. They havent met my lawyers.

Aqua "con" lol.....I cant believe anyone would even buy from them. A sucker is born every minute.

The problem is, they operate under other names. I recently ordered from them (unknowingly) at qualitymarinelife.com. You can imagine the cussing I did when my PayPal payment came up as going to Aquacon. A month went by without my hearing from them or receiving the item, and they never responded to multiple calls/emails requesting information on the order status--although my payment was processed immediately.

After not receiving any response from Aquacon/Quality Marine Life/Saltwaterfish Inc. (the last name is, I guess, yet another one they operate under, which showed up on my PayPal account as the vendor that my payment went to) I opened a dispute with PayPal. Luckily, they resolved it in my favor. Judging from my mercifully brief experience and everything I've read about them, they are crookeder than a snake's back and beyond shady. Avoid the site below--they are Aquacon operating under a different name:

http://www.qualitymarinelife.com/

Learned my lesson a while ago--I'm going to avoid purchasing anything from an online retailer again unless it's from LiveAquaria.com.

Just received a pair of candy basslets this week and each 1.5" fish probably had 2 gallons of water in the shipping bag. Excellent selection, shipping, and customer service FTW....they are doing it the "right" way that everyone else should be following.

LOL they're still around? i've been hearing stories since i entered the hobby. i remember almost ordering some blue lolly polyp tunicates from em.

Since I try to stick to aquacultured livestock when possible, I often have to go through online vendors. So far I've had good experiences ordering from (in no particular order) Tidal Gardens, Puff D Aquatics, Pacific East Aquaculture, Inland Aquatics, Sustainable Aquatics, and Live Aquaria (including Diver's Den). The only place I've had a bad experience with so far was GARF: terrible packaging (most of the water had leaked out of the bags and soaked the shipping box); didn't send what I ordered; misidentified species; tiny, overpriced frags in bad shape; overcharged my card; and lousy customer service. Overall though, I've been lucky.

Was that the pair of candy basslets from DD? If so, congratulations--those were sweeeet.

wow that is crazy !

Plus very expensive!! $$$$$ We do need pics though!

Another on-line vendor I've had good experiences with is BlueZoo Aquatics.

YOU BOUGHT THE CANDY BASSLETS!???

I am so jealous!

you def. have to post pics and tell us how they interact.

Another good online retailer is saltwaterfish.com. They have great stuff and they always have crazy specials.

CANDY BASSLETS!!!! Definitely need some pics!!! $1600 for 2 fish, way out of my price range. And people here get upset when someone buys a head of some rare zoa for $50.

Imaging those die, 1600 down the toilet...

DD is primarily wild caught, except a handful of fish and some corals.

Never Heard of these guys but I'll def. never even consider ordering from their site. Thanks for the heads up.

lol

wow I'm embarrassed I missed that

ft pierce and ft lauderdale are 100 miles away though,so perhaps not the same company. But I cant imagine another company that's called saltwaterfish inc. besides saltwaterfish.com

Will do. I'm not much of a camera guy, although my coworker is. I really want to place them in a 200g tank where they'll be "happiest", but I'm concerned I'll never see them.

Anyhow, they are sweet to watch and following each other around right now (in a QT tank). My hope is that one day we'll be able to see some spawning behavior and (fingers crossed, knock on wood) maybe even try to rear offspring.

DD pretty regularly offers CB fish (especially in pairs or trios) and inverts (peppermint shrimp), mostly from ORA. So far I've seen small gobies (tiger, sharknose, neon), clownfish, cardinalfish (Banggai and once in a great while, threadfins), and Meiacanthus fangblennies (striped and canary) from ORA; and tank-raised P. maculosus angels from East Asia. They don't have them all the time; they tend to get some in for a few days, then none for a little while.

They also offer a lot of aquacultured corals from various places--have a whole subsection of them, actually. I don't know about the clams, although I think most giant clams offered in the aquarium trade these days are maricultured or aquacultured--someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

As you can tell, I spend a lot of time perusing that site and get email updates from them regularly.

What is so funny?

saltwaterfish.com is not at all related to aquacon.

I think they were refering to people getting upset for $50 for one head of a zoa.

Lol, ok. That's what my first thought.

How have these people not been massively sued and shut down by now?