Saltcritters

I bought a few acan frags that came in missing the tissue and they asked for more pictures and told me I was a dumb newbie

Have ordered a total of 4 seahorse feeders. One broke soon after receiving.

Have now written to them on 3 occasions trying to get a replacement with no response. So much for the promised response within 24 hours. No telephone listed for follow up. Frustrated.

Unfortunately haven't been able to locate another source for these. Guess I need to try to go back to my credit card company. Why do you need 100 words? Have ordered a total of 4 seahorse feeders.

One broke soon after receiving. Have now written to them on 3 occasions trying to get a replacement with no response. So much for the promised response within 24 hours. No telephone listed for follow up.

Frustrated.

Unfortunately haven't been able to locate another source for these. Guess I need to try to go back to my credit card company.

Ordered 2 female seahorses from here was told they eat frozen and they wont touch frozen food i have made many concacts with him aboit it and he keeps saying basically they will eat it or die then tells me a week and a half after ive had them they was wild caught and not captive breed then says we have had them 2 weeks and they ate frozen fine. No wild caught adult seahorse will or can be weaned to frozen food in 2 weeks. Wont refund money even though they false advertised the seahorses.

My wife bought a $50 gift card from his website and gave it to me for x-mas. I tried to use it 9 months later (the SAME year) and it said expired. I've emailed him multiple times and he won't allow me to use the $50 that my wife gave him.

His response was that it "expires in 6 months". Thats just theft in my book. Any reasonable seller would have extended my gift card. It's not like it was a gift card from years ago.

AND I've spent over $1,000 on his website in the past several years.

Ive made 3, $150 frag orders from this guy. I must say the frags are nice in quality overall.

However I have noticed he likes sending me some of the same exact types of corals, like zoanthids when i order a variety of zoanthids.

In other words, I got a couple different zoas and he sent me 2 frags of the same kind...I realized it wasnt a coincidence after it happened 3 *** times... Not happy at all, this guy is a rip off.

This site almost like one site from florida (RR),price is very good but they are very tricky ! They always have coupon for 40% off regular price but when you trying to get the best pieces and they think they wont make any crazy profit,they will take out the corals from your shopping shop and told you that the pieces is sold and when you come back when the sale is over .

You will find your pieces there back again with regular prices. They dont have reliability at all but if you lucky ,you can score pretty good pieces.

Just becarefull !! You get what you pay !!

So I've ordered from them before, and the corals were dirt cheap. They had fruitloops for 5 dollars for a 8-10 polyp frag. Rasta look a likes and all the sorts of zoanthids for dirt cheap. That was 4-5 years ago.

I tried placing an order today, and the prices were up a little bit, but he had had a sale the past few days for 31% off or free express shipping on orders over $131. However, his site was down last night, so I e-mailed him today at 11:18AM and asked if the sale was still valid. Four minutes later at 11:22AM he said, "We extended the sale until noon today because our site was down." Before I submitted my order of $150, I sent another e-mail asking if I'd still receive free shipping at 11:48AM. No response. But just to make sure I made it before the 12:00PM today I went ahead and took the $46 shipping cost and asked for a refund of the shipping cost b/c he'd said the sale was extended to noon.

The guy responds back at 12:16PM and says it's way past noon *Eastern Time* and he wouldn't refund the shipping cost! He didn't respond before the order, but he responded so quickly after the order?? So I asked to cancel my order and he has the balls to say now I have to pay 10% on the $196 total! That it was some cancellation fee. This was in the span of *15 MINUTES*. Can someone explain to me how I have to take a $20 dollar hit (shipping included in the 10%!!) on my UNTOUCHED corals?

Also, I sent the e-mail at 11:18AM CST, that's 12:18PM EST, so why the *** didn't he just say that the SALE IS OVER? Instead he ambiguously says the sale was extended til noon; no mention of time zone!! He blames ME for not mentioning that I'm in CST and he says that I'm ***** for not knowing that he's in Indiana. BUT Indiana has both EST AND CST time zones!! And back to the first point, the sale was over so why bother saying that it goes til noon??

Does this seem like a scam to you? Or just rotten customer service?? Either way, run away from this one guys.... Typical chop shop with horrible horrible customer service just looking to screw people anyway they can. On the upside, maybe business is so bad that they have to do this scalping/scamming... which means hopefully they'll go under soon!! The reefing hobbyists in this world do not need to deal with such animosity and BS!!

This is an e-mail I received from him after telling him that I escalated the case on PayPal b/c he was being a troll.

"Your card is charged that second and we are charged the fees. Your order was already picked and bagged not even ten min after we got your order. The fact is you wasted our time and made a d.i.c.k. move of opening a case before even questioning us. Why would we want to treat you nicely if your treating us like *** without even giving us a chance to respond???

If someone comes up to you and punches you in the face do you say thank you?

Nothing lost? Your forgetting about all the fees and time of ours you wasted. I had your order picked and bagged not even ten min after it was placed.

Obviously I can't post on PayPal since you escalated the case. "

Wouldn't have been a problem if he honored his sale and wasn't so shady about the details of his time zone issues. This concludes my previous review of him scalping 10% off my refund b/c evidently he can miraculously pack corals in 10 minutes. Seems like other people got screwed by him this way too, check his FB page. Don't bother with this chump, he's not worth your time or money! Go somewhere better. No human, nonetheless the CEO of a company, should call a customer such profane things. Only little girls do that sort of thing...

This piece of *** is the worst chop shop in the entire industry. He sells dirty coral with every pest imaginable and has an even dirtier personality.

His customer service is terrible and his communication is worse. He cannot do simple math and ships fresh cut garbage coral mounted on some of the cheapest frag plugs I've ever seen. Almost every frag I purchased either had to be thrown away because it was DOA or died within a week of being in quarantine.

Worst experience EVER with an online retailer of coral. I will never order from this guy again and hope you won't either.

Wish I would have read the reviews online before doing an order. Ordered 10 corals at a price that was (apparently) too good to be true. Corals arrived in a home made box with very thinwall insulation, heat pack was smashed and wet with all attempts made at making the box smaller to conserve shipping costs. Box had holes in it as well.

Now to the corals... from the photos it was evident these were fresher cuts. But I hoped the corals would be frags from colonies that were allowed to heal and recover from import. Instead it was immediately apparent the seller had hacked up wild colonies with dead and dying sponges, in an effort to quickly flip the frags before losses happened on his dime.

Dipping the corals also revealed asterina stars and a possible zoa eating nudibranchs.

Unfortunately in this world it seems you get what you pay for and saltcritters.com does not have the time nor energy to provide quality corals for the price they charge. Some may find this a bargain, but most will find this business to be an expensive lesson in economics. Trying to appeal to the owner will only lead to frustration and promises of credit on future orders.

Best of luck to all the reef hobbyists out there, from my experience your money is best spent elsewhere.

I've purchased a lot of coral from a lot of sellers and vendors in the last few years. This is the first negative feedback I've given.

Typically I stay away from the "Chop Shop" type vendors that are obviously turning a quick profit on recently acquired purchases from wholesalers, but every once in a while something catches my eye that Mr. Salty puts up. In this last group of chalices and zoa colonies he put up I saw an interesting zoa that I was going to split with a buddy so I forked out the $50 for the colony and the $40 for shipping.

The box came in and was packaged well. No leaks and the bag seemed to be fairly warm which is good since the weather has been so cold. Honestly, that's where the good experience stopped.

Normally I like to take a look at the coral while it's still in the bag to see how it's doing. Not happening with this shipment. Through the bag it is obvious the water is full of debris and brown in color. I float the bag and then open it up. The water was brown, putrid smelling(kind of like when you've left anything biological in a cup of water for way to long), and full of debris. Anyone that has shipped before knows to fill the bag with fresh tank water and try to shake the frag free of any detris that may have settled onto it to avoid this issue.

The zoas where obviously perturbed. All were pinched shut and deflated. Now if the bag came in cold I would expect this, but since it was about the right temp I'm blaming the water quality. I've ordered plenty of zoas from Travis (PlanetZoa) that are open in the bag or open within minutes of being in the tank. I take a few pictures and send them over to Mr. Salty just to inform him of the issue. I know that even in this state they will probably open up, but I was trying to give him a heads up on how they arrived. I always like feedback on my shipping.

After thinking about my purchase I realize that the rock I have doesn't appear to be the same as I remember so I look through his site just to double check. Turns out I have a rock that is still for sale on the site. I understand he has a lot of frags and that orders can get mixed up, so I let him know he made a mistake. I'm not looking for a refund, I just want the zoas I ordered. He did offer me credit for the zoas but not for the shipping costs.

After informing him that I would like the correct order shipped to me at his expense he tells me I am more that welcome to repurchase the zoas that I've already purchased when he puts them back on the site tonight. I'm assuming that would be at my expense for shipping again.

My stance on this is that Mr. Salty made the mistake of shipping me the wrong zoas. Why not just "eat" the $40 shipping charge and send me the right order instead of trying to make a quick buck. I don't really need nor want a store credit. After this experience I wouldn't order from him again anyways because I think there is something wrong with the way he ships.

This could have easily been resolved in one e-mail. "Hey man, I made a mistake. I'll get you the right frag shipped out tomorrow."

People, I know he has cheap coral and you may even get something nice out of it, but its a *** shot. You might win or you might lose. I just wanted to inform the public of how he deals with a mistake he makes.

If anyone wants the actual e-mail exchange shoot me a pm and I'll be more than happy to forward it on to show how bad business is done.

I have ordered with Mr. Salty for years now, and have endured the obnoxious amount of photos he sends out of his daughter and poor customer service for long enough now. I don't need to spend too long belaboring this point, so I will attempt to be brief.

The coral may be cheap, but you are taking a risk when ordering from him. Most of these he frags himself and will ship the next day, offering no time for the coral to recover. Like the previous complaint, if there is any issue (even if it is on their end) he will NOT fix it in a way that is fair to the consumer.

I have sent him multiple emails over the months/years and the responses are always the same. Mr. Salty will never admit a mistake he or his wife makes, they would rather count you off as just another pissed off customer. I have gotten some great frags out of him, but the hassle is not worth the pay-off.

Also, the photos make the coral appear much larger online than what you will receive. So yes, you are receiving a $15 frag (plus $40 shipping), but you are receiving a fraction of the amount of coral you would receive at your local fish stores or even other vendors online.

Stay away from Mr. Salty