aquarium sites being expensive.

[Sgooosh]

we all know keeping fish is very pricey. but buying live merchandise online is just so more pricey but sometimes worth it.
kinda like liveaquaria, lures me in with a $3 beautiful betta, then hits me with a $23 shipping fee stick. lol.
but some sites like amazon have it too with less shipping fee

 

[mcordelia]

Depends on what you are buying I think. I'm not sure I'd buy fish off of Amazon, but I've considered buying plants. Anything else that I can get for free shipping is fair game from Amazon in my opinion. I wouldn't buy gravel online, since it is probably cheaper to special order through your LFS assuming they have the brand but not the color you want. Idk, I guess it's kind of a case by case basis for me.

 

[Sgooosh]

Depends on what you are buying I think. I'm not sure I'd buy fish off of Amazon, but I've considered buying plants. Anything else that I can get for free shipping is fair game from Amazon in my opinion. I wouldn't buy gravel online, since it is probably cheaper to special order through your LFS assuming they have the brand but not the color you want. Idk, I guess it's kind of a case by case basis for me.

Plants, i use like home depot rocks, ill try to special order something

 

[DAnCSF]

I think it's better to differentiate between general buying from Amazon vs buying directly from a company. Generally speaking in terms of live stock and plants, I prefer to actual seeing what I'm getting. For me buying plants is a gamble sometime they work, sometimes they just die off....I'd love to hear from those who actually bought fish sight unseen and via the mail.

 

[Colin_T]

If you buy a lot of fish and plants, the shipping cost is spread over more items and works out less per fish. If you only buy a couple of fish, the shipping cost will hit you hard.

We had this issue when we imported fish from anywhere. It cost use several thousand dollars just to have the quarantine department look in the boxes, and the airlines charged us per box, regardless of how many fish were in the box. So we tried to get as many fish in each box as possible.

If we had 10 fish in a box, it cost us the same as if we had 500 fish in a box, at least from the freight and import duty/ charges. However, the price was then spread out over 500 fish instead of just 10.

Normally we would bring in 10,000+ fish per shipment, and the amount of money in freight and charges only increased the total fish price by a few cents per fish.

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Never buy gravel or rocks online unless they have free shipping for it. The heavier the item, the more it costs in freight.

 

[Sgooosh]

If you buy a lot of fish and plants, the shipping cost is spread over more items and works out less per fish. If you only buy a couple of fish, the shipping cost will hit you hard.

We had this issue when we imported fish from anywhere. It cost use several thousand dollars just to have the quarantine department look in the boxes, and the airlines charged us per box, regardless of how many fish were in the box. So we tried to get as many fish in each box as possible.

If we had 10 fish in a box, it cost us the same as if we had 500 fish in a box, at least from the freight and import duty/ charges. However, the price was then spread out over 500 fish instead of just 10.

Normally we would bring in 10,000+ fish per shipment, and the amount of money in freight and charges only increased the total fish price by a few cents per fish.

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Never buy gravel or rocks online unless they have free shipping for it. The heavier the item, the more it costs in freight.

oh its $32 and if you have like $200 you can get free shipping!?!??!!??!?!/1`11

 

[mcordelia]

It depends. Liveaquaria makes you buy a ton of stuff before they do free shipping, but for example modern aquarium will ship for free any order above $50, even if it contains live stuff.