Bobs Tropical Plants.

[Noahsfish]

One of my sterbai corydoras passed away a few days ago , and so I'm looking for a replacement as well as another buddy for the group. My lfs carries them but has rather expensive prices with sterbais going 15$ a piece. I really hate ordering online, I've tried twice with no good outcome, but I found this new website (bobs tropical plants) that has what looks like ridiculously good prices. 5$ a sterbai, 2$ for cardinals, and really good bargains on plants. Only thing is, I can't find much as far as reviews go, and the only video on YouTube I could find was some guy who mentioned he hates it because the shrimp he ordered died... Does anybody else here happen to have ordered from them?

 

[CJH0825]

Have you tried eBay or Aquabid? 

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I know Bob from online at another fish site and chat room. I have purchased non live stuff from him. Bob is not his real name. He is a vendor on the largest general fish site out there. Since it would violate rules here to post a link, here is his feedback info from that site. He has been much less active there since the end of last year:
 
Feedback Score: 174
Positive Feedback: 99.4%
Members who left positive: 175
Members who left negative: 1
Total positive feedback: 242
 
Here is the thing to understand about corys and shipping. Corys, when frightened, can give off a chemical/hormone which can be toxic. When they are shipped one needs to take special precautions as the release of this stuff into a shipping bag virtually guarantees DOAs or fish that die soon after. You can tell this has been an issue if the fish arrive with red blotches. Good shippers use the kick the bucket technique to try and purge the fish of this before final bagging for the trip. This still doesn't guarantee it can never occur in transit
 
With many corys this issue never even arises and they do just fine. Other corys are more prone to problems in this respect. Unfortunately, sterbais are one of the ones this happens to more frequently.
 
The other thing is that the markups on fish are always high. If I ship fish to you and they die in transit, I must refund your money and eat the loss. If I get in a box of 100 corys and before they get out of Q, 25 have died, my costs per fish goes up. For smaller operations like Bob's, that have much lower overhead, the need to mark up 300% is nowhere near as necessary. Stores have much higher overhead and they must.
 
Houston Aquarium Warehouse seems to have begun selling on AquaBid and list sterbais at at a bit more than $5 but a lot less than $15. They have a good rep. I got wild altums from them which unfortunately did not do well. But they came highly recommended to me.
 
wetspot also has them but for more money. I know him as well from fish weekends where he is sometimes a vendor. Nice gent and lovely looking stuff for sale the the events. I have never bought from him however.
 
One last thing, there will be some discrepancy in sterbai pricing based solely on the size and sourcing of the fish. Bigger costs more.

 

[Noahsfish]

When I go to a lfs I have always noticed the bigger the fish, the more expensive. I actually go for the smaller healthy ones because i know they'll live longer. If I were to order say 3-5 of the corys with PRIORITY mail do you think any or all would survive? Let's say I got 5 then that would be 25$ for them plus shipping which is 7$. Versus store where it's 75$ for 5.....but I also know his DOA doesn't cover priority, like most vendors. So