Aquarium Adventure — Attraction in Bolingbrook

Prior to going here, I read a lot of mixed reviews on Facebook, but I decided that I would give it a try, seeing that it was the closest aquarium specialty store to me. I was disappointed when I had an experience very similar to those who have previously reviewed. Here is a synopsis of my experience: I walked in and at the front, there were two employees chatting away. As I moved my way toward them, they did not make eye contact and in fact walked away without asking if I needed help, or even a greeting when I had walked in the door. At this point, I decided to go wait in line at the register, because I thought the cashier might be able to help. He pointed me towards customer service, which made complete sense. Two people were in line in front of me when I got to the desk. They were helped relatively fast, but a line quickly started to form behind me, and it was clear they were understaffed, or perhaps just lazily staffed. Once it was my turn, a young man (perhaps 19 or 20) asked what I needed help with. I was (and still am) looking for help with a 3 gallon aquaponics tank in which I would like to house two mystery snails. I explained that I have zero experience with aquariums, but that I had added denitrifying bacteria and dechlorinator in the water thus far and have been letting the filter run for a couple of days before I went to purchase the snails. I chose gravel from Petsmart that was naturally colored, without any red stones for fear of copper as it poisons snails. He told me that “big box store” stuff is not safe for aquatic life, and while my gravel may not be the best choice, that felt like an exaggeration. However, I obliged and picked out the smallest bag, seeing as I have a very small tank. It was 16 dollars, which I am fine with, I am just adding it here for reference. He then began to talk about water quality, and it was quite clear he didn’t know what kind of environment mystery snails need as he talked in circles and contradicted himself for about five minutes. The chemical he showed me (I apologize, I don’t remember exactly what it is) but it was at a price point of 25 dollars. The smallest serving for this chemical was one teaspoon for five gallons. Once he read the label and realized this, he had the stupid idea to recommend buying a 5 gallon bucket to concoct my new water in. Can’t I use half a teaspoon or even measure it in grams? We just sort of awkwardly moved along as I didn’t pick up the chemical. We moved to aquatic plants, for which they had a huge selection and they all seemed healthy to me, bright green and no dead leaves. I purchased two moss balls, an anubias, and a red wendtii. They all ranged from around 8-11 dollars each. I was totally fine with that because I assume I am getting high quality products that are hopefully an investment for a new hobby. After we picked out the plants, he led me to the mystery snails. This is where it actually gets bad. I was HORRIFIED to see close to 200 snails in a ten gallon tank at largest. There were was a layer of them in some spots of three snails high, not even being able to be on gravel. I understand that they are not the most desired creature, and do not require much space but even from my lack of experience, I knew that was a horrible environment for the snails. I am running out of characters, but know that he rushed me through the process of picking a pet, a horrible thing to do. Once I got my snails, he walked me to the register to drop them off, said “have a nice day” and left me on my way. He did not ask if there was anything else I needed. I was nowhere near done picking out all the essentials for my tank. I only spent 63 dollars in total, but I was willing to spend over 250 to get the proper necessities for my tank. They lost out on my money that time, and forever in the future. As far as the snails go, less than 24 hours have passed, and they are showing signs of being ill, and I fear they will die. I have never written a Google review as I have never had such a bad customer experience like this at a store, but now I want to...

I will give them that there is a very wide selection of fish and aquatic plants at this store. They have huge display tanks with fish that used to be impressive, but now they just look extremely cramped now that the fish are large. There is also a huge saltwater tank in the middle, but the light is never on in it so it looks pretty sad, and the fake corals look absolutely awful, especially in a store that specializes in fish.

The problem is, most of them are 2-3x the price at other stores, and offer absolutely no difference in quality of livestock. In fact, I would say that they are lower quality. I have never had trouble keeping fish alive from any other source other than this one, and that includes hardy fish such as guppies and swordtails. all went into an established tank that held much more delicate fish, but within 18 hours, all were dead. Took them back, and the store only allows for "store credit," which in this day and age is just an obvious way of saying you know your product is of subpar quality. Another indication of that is their warranty: it's only 48 hours. Even cruddy places like PetSmart and PetCo have 14 DAY guarantees on their fish.

Their equipment and supplies are also pretty overpriced. Would never buy something like a filter or tank there, ever. Even the big box stores that run at MSRP are way, way below this place. Anything more than odds and ends such as dry food, air stones, air/water line etc is best bought somewhere far away from here.

The staff overall are pretty short on even basic knowledge of the species there short of the most run of the mill species, but like to brag about all of these tanks they have at home (which to any experienced fishkeeper would know they are a complete disaster if they actually exist). Many of them also like to try to get people to buy fish that "go together" simply because they are from the same part of the world. Anyone that knows fish knows that it isnt that simple.

The absolute final straw I had was after noticing a tank full of rams had ich and pointing it out to multiple associates, one of the same associates still tried to sell me said german blue rams and said "I should have a quarantine tank anyways." Quarantine tanks are supposed to be for problems that you do NOT know about, not for fish that you buy that are already sick. So I'm supposed to buy a pair $20 german blue rams (again, 3x the price of other sources), then buy medication to fix the ich (easily another $10-20), and then when they die from stress and/or disease in three days, they won't refund the money because it's outside of the 48 hour guarantee. Right...

I will never shop there on principal alone. No associate should be trying to sell fish that she knows are sick to customers, especially with a disease as contagious and possibly deadly as ich. Had it been some other person that does not have 15+ years of experience, they may have well bought the fish and introduced them to their tank at home which would have infected everything. Shame on that woman and shame on the store for not only employing people like that but also not quarantining...

So incredibly sad…was in the area for the reptile expo and stopped by and this store almost brought tears to my eyes especially the reptile section the setups were terrible some things that stood out even more then the others the baby cresties tank had disgusting stagnant water at the bottom from the dirt flooding and them not cleaning it to the point the substrate was almost all the way under water and I took a vid it even had parasite worms coming out of one of the crickets in the tank from all the dead crickets in the tank that also looked to big for them let alone all the feces that was in that enclosure and on the walls another one was one of the ball python had a absolute ton of stuck shed on them layers and layers of it so incredibly sad to see the conditions they are housing these living animals in and doing it proudly there was also some rehoming leopard geckos one being 2 in the same tank the enclosure selling them in wasn’t proper either but they were also recommending that they go together which is so incredibly false information and dangerous to be giving out info like that they are solitary animals and known to attack each and even kill each other one per tank max and the “cuddling” that was put on there that they like to do is them competing for resources not wanting to cuddle each other…

Now for the small animal part…all the tanks r open for ppl to touch and grab etc any of them there were kids ripping hides off animals to take them out of their enclosures while their sleeping or trying to get away from the craziness and handling them so rough and just stressing them out let alone the fact that small animals ESPECIALLY ferrets can contract sickness from humans it takes one person with a simple cold to make all those poor ferrets sick that is so incredibly irresponsible to put your animals health at risk like that there was also no push for hand sanitizer or anything inbetween each animal species or different tank which is even more baffling it’s like they want their animal to get sick and spread sickness to other around

This petstore is beyond a shame just as bad if not worse then petco/petsmart idk how someone could work at a place like that animal health and husbandry should always come first and they are not...