Is it safe to buy loaches in the internet?

[lunasmile]

I would like to get hora, skunk and kuhli loaches, but thay do not have them in the stores, and i am kind of afraid to get them from the internet... Do you think is safe?, do you know any web site where I can get them from?, please, let me know...thanks. victoria.

[Mark in Vancouver]

I haven't ordered on-line, but kuhli's of any kind are famously bad travellers. We have seen a few complaints about ordering kuhlis here. The other loaches you mention are aggressive - be warned. I wouldn't personally mix kuhlis with skunk loaches. I keep my skunks by themselves - now five!

Kuhlis want a very gentle environment with lots of plants. With skunk loaches it's a bit more chaotic.

[lunasmile]

thank you for you info. I think i am gonna skip that, I am gonna keep looking in the fish stores. there was a really good store around , but there was a fire and all the fish died, it was terrible. well, thanks again, I think I am just gonna stay with my clown loaches for now.. thanks.

[chefkeith]

Alot of people have had good luck buying fish online. I've order fish 4 times online.
Aquabid.com usually has some nice loach auctions. There was a loach grab bag auction resently with some Kuhli's and some othe loaches, but that ended a few days ago. There are some Yo-Yo's up for auction right now.

[jerry_tyler]

I just bought 4-4.5 inches clowns online. I haven't received them yet. I will tuesday. I will get back and tell you if they are what they say.

[JonGuerriero]

I've used petsolutions.com and liveaquaria.com with success.

[cybermeez]

I've used liveaquaria.com for fresh and marine fish and had good experiences with both types of orders. Foster and Smith owns them and they take great care to make sure they are shipping you healthy critters.

[Wendie]

I can get my teeth in this subject.

I ordered three kuhlis online from one place that had a fairly good rep. When they arrived, the water stunk and one was dead. The other died within 24 hours.

I decided to try online on AquaBid. The first 6 were returned to the sender. I then received another batch which slowly died one by one over the course of 7 days. The seller replaced them and added some black kuhlis. Well they looked great but within a few days I was down to two black kuhlis out of six and three regular kuhlis out of six, but they were alive and kicking. They have settled down nicely and just about doubled in size. I might add that they have their own tank with caves, rocks and even an Indian Almond Leaf.

Well in the meantime I got an email a few months back from Live Aquaria stating that they had some blacks. I thought about it and decided that since the email was a couple months old the fish must have settled down. Now add to that the fact that they were on sale... I decided to try again. I also got a couple Yo Yo's since you need to order a certain $$ amount from them. Well they arrived active and healthy looking... all of them. The Yo Yo's have more than doubled in size as did the black kuhlis. I did lose one little kuhli but it was nothing like before.