Ocean's Tropical Fish — Local services in Mission Viejo

Hi Everyone!

So i just bought my new betta fish from this store! His name is Jellybean. I would say this store is 5/5 worth the visit.

So timeline, on october 30th i came to visit the store on my lunch break. I used to visit this store in 2021 and 2022 when i use to own a couple of freshwater fishes. I stopped the hobby and didn't get back in until recently. I recalled this store was fantastic then and i would say its fantastic now. I was browsing through the betta fish selection and was pretty surprised on what they had. After browsing for about 20 mins, this koi betta caught my eye. Lets just say, i took a picture of him and his friends and sent it to my partner. My partner also agreed on selecting this particular betta. It definitely caught both of our eyes.

The next day on October 31st i came back to the store and this betta was still on the shelf. Was i a bit worried that he might have been sold in 24 hours? I did but that's because i was overthinking. But lets just say the world was alligned and i was meant to get this fish. The clerk who was working at the time was very friendly and very helpful. I have a 5 gallon tank that i have been cycling for over 7 weeks before homing this betta fish. The clerk was very informative and supportive on my purchase of this fish and give me very insightful advice about my tank cycling since i weekly water test and keep a excel sheet of my nitrogen cycle. He definitely advise me that my tank was perfect for this fish to come home too. I also bought a couple of betta fish food which was reasonably priced.

Overall, i would highly recommend to everyone. My partner and i are planning to come back to purchase another betta fish in the future months!! So that my partner has his own one...

This store is my go to place.. I have been in this hobby for a while and I have never seen such a clean fishstore. The fish husbandry is great and I hardly see any dead fish in the tanks. Few days back i bought some chromes for my 75G from LFS and than some from Ocean's Tropical Fish.. and I could clearly tell the difference of which fish is from which store. The once that came from my LFS has bruises and lost scales and tales while the ones that I brought from this store are fresh, healthy, looking beautiful and shine well due to all scales intact.

You got to see the packaging he does while selling you the fishes. At first he doesn't use the net to catch the fishes. He has a transparent plastic fish catcher which doesn't allow the fishes to be out of water at any point of time. IMO that is more healthier way to catch them. Secondly I have never seen someone packing the fishes with so much care and attention like Dave does. This shows how much he cares his fishes unlike others who just want to sell them. It takes me a while to unpack those bags to put fish in my tank.

Dave also bought my live rock and gave me a very competitive price. I was trying to sell those on craigslist and no one was interested and Dave gave me better price on what I was selling for on craigslist.

Further he gave me whole lot of cheato for $5. I never see any LFS carry cheato for sale. That's why I used to purchase on ebay for much more money and added shipping cost.

This store rocks... way to go Dave.. keep it up.. this hobby is intact as long as we have LFS stores like this. Dave you are doing an...

Awesome place!

For a newbie marine aquarist this is the place to go. We bought a house that had a tank installed and running already, (just no fish in it) so we had to take it out or learn quick as marine virgins. We decided to give it a go and just stock up with affordable sea life at first, incase we accidentally made a dead fish soup :(

Luckily that hasn't happened and we owe a lot of that success to Oceans! Our experiences have all been super positive, we had lots of questions when we were first starting out, and even if they were way busy sometimes the owner and employees always did a great job of taking care of us and answering questions. I won't name names, but we tried going to a couple other stores where the employees were either not helpful, not friendly, out right shady, or not knowledgeable and the fish or coral we did get from those places didn't last very long... Even though the things we got at oceans are still alive and well (so it's not a systemic problem, our levels show it's a healthy environment) IMO I feel those other stores just wanted to make a buck off of some newbies and sold us some less than healthy sea life.

Finally, another cool thing is that they remember you here! And when you come back in they seem genuinely interested in the well being of your aquarium. Actually I'm writing this because the owner seemed kinda hurt by and asked me about a 3 star rating my wife left for Oceans by mistake (intended for Sandbar) and I felt so bad I needed to add my own review on top of having my wife correct hers.

Thanks guys, keep up...