clean up crew... best deal

[LilBugger225]

Time to restock my cleanup crew. It's been awhile. Where is the best place/deal to get a good one right now. I want some turbos, hermits, and emeralds, and a couple of serpent stars. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

LB 8)

 

[JohnD]

I placed an order at etropicals.com and went the build your own route. I also had Fedex deliver the shipment to the terminal servicing my location. I picked up the delivery there instead of waiting for the delievery.

Everything arrived alive and I immediately started to acclimate everything over the next 2 hours. The conch, brittle stars, red hermits and astraea snails have made a big improvement in my tanks.

I was happy with the purchase!!

 

[Anonymous]

I like www.reeftopia.com - granted it's mostly tropical atlantic species but they work fairly well. Also www.floridapets.com has good prices and some intersting stuff from time to time.

 

[Mihai]

John,

How can you convince the FedEx guys to let you pick up at terminal? When I ordered my LR the truck went all around the town for 9 hours in sub-freezing temperatures.

 

[Unarce]

I've seen some 'live critter pack' listings on ebay. I've never ordered cleaners from here before, but the seller's rating should give you an idea.

 

[JohnD]

Mihai -

You are paying for the shipping charges, so ship it to the address that works best for you. In my case I have the shipment delivered to the Fedex terminal's address and in the special comments (or whatever that box is called) I have the shipper (in the last case it was etropicals) say -"hold for customer pick-up." I make sure I am there when the terminal's customer service desk opens and I have my package at home with 15 minutes.

The first time I did this, I went to my Fedev terminal and asked the customer service manager if I could have a shipment held for customer pickup. She replied yes and I put in the order that day. She was the one that handled my package the very next day.

I have probably done this one-half dozen times or so and have never had a problem. You are absolutely right - you do not want your critters shipment riding around all day in the back of an unheated Fedex truck.

HTH

 

[Anonymous]

The 'hold for pickup' option has to be worked out between you and the sender. I recently bought a few things from MaryHM of www.seacrop.com and she was nice enough to mark it hold for pickup - went to fedex office and picked it up that morning instead of waiting till 4pm.

Side note - Mary has good prices on clean up critters too you should check her site out.

 

[JohnD]

Let me clarify what I said. The Fedex service manager told me to send the shipment to my name followed by that particular Fedex terminals's address.

Addressing the shipping label in that manner made sure that the package was held for me. After all, Fedex could not deliver the package to my house because they did not have my house's address.

 

[qwit10]

I agree with the www.reeftopia.com suggestion. They have some great (if not best) deals on the Atlantic critters. You'll have to go somewhere else to get big mexican turbos and other things like that. I like dealing with the people at www.PetSolutions.com. There are lots of vendors out there, it's just a matter of their husbandry and customer service in my opinion.

 

[npaden]

I'll 3rd the www.reeftopia.com recomendation.

FWIW, Nathan

 

[K9coral]

Check out www.sevenseasonline.com , I have ordered from this place several times and they always send extra stuff and the shipping is free.

 

[Fastmarc]

You could try GARF. Just got a clean up crew order (snail and hermits) from them last night for a 125 gallon and everything arrived in good condition.
They immediately went to work.

 

[Mihai]

Thanks a lot for the FedEx delivery tips.
This will likely help a lot with my next batch of LR (it's still very cold around here).

Thanks again,
Mihai

 

[Anonymous]

www.liveaquaria.com also has package deals..you might wanna browse all these suggestions to get the best idea for your needs...