stopped in ILC on sun

[reefitup]

FWIW...

I stopped in there very recently...

The 'damaged frag tank' was more like a cyanobacteria farm, and cyanobacteria was in other tanks as well. I'm not exagerating. There were corals with hair algae growing ON the actual coral. I saw lots of dead fish scattered through the tanks...nems just withering away and sliming away... I've got to tell you. I've been in there twice in the past 4 months. Each time I go in there, it's worse than before. If I ever go in there again, I half way expect to see lizards in the tanks or something.

They did have a cool color changing Tile fish or something in there for 89 bucks, but you couldn't have paid me 89 bucks to take it from them. Really...

It actually made me downright MAD to see the conditions in there.

 

[saltwater4life]

Yeah i went the other day and the guy there actually told us he buys most of his stuff at another pet store (i can't think of the name) but that's kinda sad that your own employ doesn't shop at the store they work at... But the part that made me leave was there live rock was 10 bucks per lb and it wasn't anything special...

 

[reefitup]

That's funny you should say that, because they tried telling me the 1st time I went in there that they supply most of the other area lfs's! :

 

[TheGuyFromNJ]

I wonder if they ever watch these threads and try to change their ways?

 

[Carlo]

That's funny you should say that, because they tried telling me the 1st time I went in there that they supply most of the other area lfs's! :

That's pretty funny.

Carlo

 

[ReeferNets]

In my travels to philly on tuesday i stopped in here.

Less then spectacular service and the Bleached BTA i got that i tried to save dissintegrated.

I am thinkin about calling them to address my concerns over a 50 dollar bleached bta.

Needless to say im not going back and hope they address some of the concerns over members here have had.

 

[atlantis]

The last time

I wonder if they ever watch these threads and try to change their ways?

Well, I am affiliated with ILC Aquatics. Let me just clear some things up.
In regards to the purple firefish, we have not gotten Helfrichis in since last year. Most likely you were talking to a younger associate who was still inexperienced or in training, so sorry for the inconvenience. Secondly, the corals are not labelled all of the time because items are constantly moved around back and forth to the zero edge and big display tanks- it would be mind boggling to try to keep up with the labelling. The corals we have are on the expensive side, but many of them are aquacultured. I used to work at another fish store, in addition to travelling to many fish stores around here. I'd have to say that some of ILC prices are high, but some are much lower, and some livestock is extremely rare. I've checked internet prices too. People say prices online are cheaper, but do you factor in shipping? And shipping for us from airlines DOES cost a ton, sometimes more than the actual livestock we get in the boxes! Sometimes we do change prices, because different shippers charge us different prices at different times. In terms of fish, just from working here I think I've seen more unique rarities then I would if I spent my life scuba diving.
In terms of the dead fish around the tanks, are you sure you didn't come in when we were getting a shipment that day? When we put shipments away, it's an ALL day ordeal, and our priority is getting the new livestock acclimated before we even check the upstairs for anything. This may be why sometimes people get a seemingly rude or quick reply from an employee too, because shipment days are hectic. It's not intended, but if you had 15 boxes of fish to acclimate, you would be a bit frazzled too. The floor might be messy and there might be trash everywhere, but as soon as we're done putting fish away from the shipment, we clean up as soon as possible. And we get shipments VERY often, so sometimes it's hard to keep up with the cleanliness because of that. So pardon for any rudeness anyone's encountered, but it is not intended and it is rarely like that. Also, we DO ship livestock to other stores- that employee wasn't making it up. Whoever you talked to in the store that said they buy fish somewhere else may have been talking about FRESHWATER fish, because that section was under renovation, so we did not have freshwater livestock at the time.
In addition to the friendliness issue, people off the streets and in supermarkets recognize me from the store and will chat with me. If we were rude employees all the time, then people wouldn't come up to me to chat about fish when I'm not even working..
If anyone has had major issues, we're always happy to help the most we can. It's rude customers we do not like, and we get them a lot. If you simply talk to us the same way you'd want to be talked to, you'd be surprised how much farther you can get.

Anyways, as an ending remark, ILC is closed for the time being. Someone broke into our store the other night and did unimaginable damage. So don't come to the store and think we're just keeping the doors locked out of ignorance. We will be reopening very soon.
Thank you for whoever took the time to read all of this, and sorry if it annoyed or bored anyone.

 

[Hawkeye]

welcome atlantis! There's always two sides to each story. It is clear you are very passionate about it and I do sincerely hope that future posts on this store will be better.

Hopefully after the damage is fixed things will start to look up. Good luck!

 

[JohnS_323]

Welcome to NJRC and thanks for the update. I hope you're able to recover from the damage quickly.

Hopefully with your dedication and passion the current preceptions will begin to turn around. I've gotten a lot of good stuff from ILC in the past.

 

[Phyl]

Good luck getting through this. Sorry to hear of the malice and damages. Hopefully they'll find the culprit.

 

[Xavier613]

Anyone know if they re-opened yet?

 

[Phyl]

Do they even PLAN on reopening? I was under the impression that wouldn't be happening.

 

[stcreef]

Was past there over the weekend...... Still have a cleaning company there and a sign on the front door about getting on their mailing list to be notified of the reopening.

 

[Embowe]

Does anyone know what exactly happened...I was up that way a few weeks ago (had to get some stuff at the dance store for my daughter) and I tried peeking in the windows...it didnt look good in there at all...Its ashame that a person(s) would get their kicks out of trashing a fish store....

 

[atlantis]

I've been in Honduras for the past couple of weeks but before I left I spoke to the manager and was told it should be open within six weeks of talking to him, so that's about 4 weeks from now. Rebuilding for any small, privately owned company will take time due to insuance issues and whatnot. When they do reopen I'll post something up on here to let people know.