Our only local fish store (other than Petco and Petsmart which don't carry live rock) is run by a a complete a$$hole human being and his assistants are worse than him. They have refused refunding me when I brought all the fish back dead on the same day because I didn't measure the water parameters both before AND after I added the fish. I showed him my current parameters (written on a piece of paper and were perfect) and he said "anybody could have made that up" - but they don't ask you to bring in a sample of your water either - so how would they know?
This was when I was a newbie and I was looking for gourami: the owner sold me one, but somebody on this forum pointed out quite easily that it was a cichlid. While not too terribly aggressive, ( my 7 Gourami in the tank kind of intimidated her even thought they never hurt her) she grew HUGE (I told him no more than 4" adult length) and she grew to easy 8-10 inches and very fat. I really grew quite fond of her but she lived in a hollowed out fake log and one day or night got stuck in there - probably after over eating and died. I felt terrible since I was just looking at bigger logs for her online before hers got too tight for her to fit. This was a very fat fish, I still feel terrible - I really liked her.
Finally he had an unlabeled piranha tank with a completely open top - just the right size that an 8 yr old child could stick his hand in there (I almost did because they seemed so friendly - yeah, because they want to eat you) . If you paid him $5 you could watch him feed a large scoop of minnows and goldfish to them. It was disgusting and a dad paid for it so his three young sons to watch, the oldest thought it was cool, the next kid turned around and couldn't watch and the 4 or 5 yr old started crying and yelling "hide baby hide!" of course they didn't and were immediately consumed and the kid collapsed in sobs. It was the most disgusting display I've ever seen in a fish store. Obviously this is how these fish eat but it shouldn't be sold as a source of entertainment.
I'm sure they are not all that way - oh his price per rock of "live" rock was $40 - no shipping but not exactly a bargain since his assistant didn't know much about them - he just said he went "somewhere" to get them every year. And to top it off the "live rock" was perfectly dry. This was not live rock.
I found some on ebay - 10lbs for $40 and shipping for $29,99. He had virtually no negative feedback and over 1000 positives. He shipped them wet rolled in newspapers and placed in a plastic bag. and surrounded by damp newspaper. The entire thing was set in a Styrofoam box set inside a regular thick cardboard box. I got it in 2 business days, He asked me to kind of describe the shape and size of what I wanted (medium size and as flat as possible since I was short on flat rock) - he shipped three lovely wet rocks with a lot of holes in them and 2 out of three of them were about as flat as you can get natural rock. The 3rd one was more rounded. Which is fine - I never thought I'd ever get even two flat rock. So I'm happy with the price and the quality. Note that he sold me 3 rocks for $40 rather than $40 EACH at the local fish store. That more than makes up for the shipping cost.
Remember that in smaller areas the LFS know they have things that are in great demand and they can get away with selling them at any price. While Online sellers have a huge amount of competition. Virtually every Fish store in the US also sells their stuff online - so they technically are are LFS - just not local to you.
The only thing you have to watch is shipping charges. There is a lovely fish store that only charges $29 for overnight shipping, but they don't have all the bells and whistles like Styrofoam containers and heat packets like other sellers - depending on the time of year, that's not a problem. Most of the online sellers for FISH charge about $49.99 and that includes Styrofoam, heat packs and overnight shipping. They watch the weather carefully in your area in case it's really hot (or cold) because they don't want them sitting on your front porch in bad weather - so sometimes they'll wait until the weather is better before shipping. So far, every one I've bought fish from have been very responsible (except the most expensive one that always makes at least 1 mistake per order- they I just ordered one beautiful betta and they sent me two. So I had to go buy a new tank for the second betta - but boy are they awesome looking. The company is expensive but sells really nice fish that I can't find locally or at any other online store (like glass fish - every store online and in town were out of them but they had them) . So that's my extensive experience with purchasing online. And I do a lot of research on the seller or company before I purchase from them. Oh and also many of them have a short description of the behavior of the fish and good companion fish. They'll list the temperature needed and some will list the PH and other parameters needed in the water. They often give you information on how big they will grow and how long they will live. But they aren't all correct - I bought some DoJo from Live Aquaria (a great fish store most of the time - but they sell so much they are often out of stock) and they said they said their max size in an aquarium was usually 8 inches but would grow about 12 inches in the wild. I have 4 of them. One is 8 inches and thin but does appear to still be growing, the other 3 are 12-18 inches and have a diameter of the size of a quarter. Super funny, very friendly and playful. I just bought them a 90 gallon tank (currently in a 50 gallon that I thought would be big enough) - as soon as it's fully cycled they'll go into the 90 gallon tank (my 50 gallon had issues with white water algae so I am not bringing any of the media or gravel over to the 90 gallon just in case it would carry that white water algae with it - so the 90 has to be fully cycled. I also bought a nice cannister filter and am excited about seeing how that works in keeping the noise level down. So far it's doing great. I want to know how to maintain it before putting fish in it too. I'm also adding good bacteria to the water, and added some floating plants (they pull all planted plants out of the ground EVERY day but tend to leave floating ones alone.
