Fintastic

I have been doing business with this company for years and could not be more pleased. They are super quick to respond to any issue I may have. My aquarium is well established and looks beautiful . Thanks Aaron for all your hard work .

Linda Simpson

Stay as far away from any business that is owned by this guy. When the store was open he he his employees on commission and they would sell you whatever they could regardless if it was what you needed or not. He now has closed the store and runs an aquarium maintenance scam. I was given a estimate of $ 130 to do a one time cleaning on my 150 gallon reef tank. His employee did nothing but talk while he was there, broke my wave maker and then charged me $ 430. When I complained I was told I would have to talk to the owner who repeatedly ignored my phone calls and messages. I ha e since found out that I am just one of many scammed by this jerk. Stay away!

I applaud this place for finally shutting down. They sold weak animals all doomed to be flushed down the toilet.
They have converted to some commercial only outfit or I don’t know what. Bottom line is that the terrible service, high prices, and horrendous product didn’t make this a place worth visiting.
I am sad to see fish stores go but this one really didn’t serve a purpose other than to dispense disappointment. I really had high hopes for the fish here and had such a terrible experience.

If you own a fish or wish to do so. Check out this place. They have everything you need for all things Fish. The prices on fish and aquarium’s are great too. I got a good deal on my aquarium and three Jack Dempsey’s.

Dead. That is what happened to all my fish.
I should have been more skeptical when I went to pickup green spotted puffer fish and 1) the lady working there said it takes skill and attention to detail to maintain these fish, and 2) there was a dead puffer fish floating upside down in the corner among the other seemingly alive puffer fish.
The fish here are significantly smaller than at other stores for about the same price. Larger fish tend to have a higher chance of surviving the trip to your tank.
The fish I bought were wild caught and as such are prone to having wild parasites. I took my dead fish back for replacements along with a water sample. Nothing in my sample indicated that my fish should be dying. I spent my own money and did a ton more research to realize it was the stress of the tank transfer that allowed the parasites to overtake and kill my fish.
A simple inspection of my frozen dead puffers would have revealed they died from parasites. The store kept focusing on the water and it wasn’t the problem. I don’t know if this is laziness or lack of extensive knowledge of all the different fish they sell at the store.
I ended up buying the same species of fish somewhere else and they survived.
I don’t like this place because it is very difficult to get down there and replace your fish. You won’t get a refund — only more sickly fish. After one round of replacing my fish and the anguish of watching another pledge class of fish die I decided they could keep my money.

It amazes me that this store is still in business. I have been keeping saltwater fish and corals for 19 years and have never seen prices this high. When I walked the aisles I can see very distressed and diseased livestock. Fintastic is selling inferior livestock at a premium price. This place might have been able to get these prices when there was no competition for saltwater fish and equipment in Charlotte, but that has changed. Make sure to look up other fish stores before shopping here. I hope this helps some people protect their tanks from crashing due to disease or poor information. STAY AWAY FROM FINTASTIC!

Great place!!! Awesome selection and the staff is very knowledgeable

we had Fintastic for over 7 years to service our reef tank. at first we were very happy with the service even we had to survive several major floods due to poorly trained technicians for the last three or four years there was constant change of technicians. The good ones were leaving since they were not very happy in their workplace and the new ones had very little knowledge about anything except for cleaning the aquarium glass. For most of our questions their response was that we need to call someone at the store who knows all of that. From time to time the manager came to set lights or controller. Even we had several technicians who caused major flooding in our house but it was the latest new technician and the response from the company which caused us to fire Fintastic. in a couple of months he was servicing the aquarium we had several broken pieces of equipment and several small floods until he «repaired» the last leak and lefy without checking anything. We had water poring for all day long which shortened our AC and flooded our basement. On our frantic calls to Fintastic all we could get was just that they were aware of the situation and since they didn’t have anybody to come and check on things right now somebody would be coming in 5 hours. After 4 hours of waiting owner of the company called and said that nobody was going to come since their company wasn’t equipped to deal with all this mess. He offered us a phone number for another company to take care of the mess and told us that somebody would swing by to take a look tomorrow or before the weekend. on our question if he talked to the technician to find our what happened he just told us that he couldn’t reach him since the technician worked as a landscaping guy and took care of our aquarium in his free time. At this point we were speechless. If we wanted to have a landscaping guy to take care of our aquarium we would have but Fintastic advertised itself as top notch knowledgeable maintenance company. After clean up and replacement costs us around $ 6000.00 fintastic declined to pay for any of that saying that their insurance just took I big hit from the job they did earlier so they couldn’t afford to deal with us. Please anybody who has Fintastic now to service their aquariums be aware that their technicians are not properly trained often they are just amateurs who like to tinkle with their own aquariums which is not bad but in most cases they don’t know more than their own aquarium and have no clue ho‘1w to maintain more complex equipment. Also since the company is growing so much they feel that they do not have to take care of their customers and can afford to loose some of them. So when something happens you will be on your own to clean up the mess.

Have not bought from here as I don’t currently own a tank, but stopped in today during their anniversary day and I have to say they have the most variety I’ve ever seen at one store. It really made me want a tank again! If I ever decide to start one up this would be the place to go!

This used to be my go to place for fish. Yes, they are a little pricey but they used to have super knowledgable staff. Not anymore. The last couple times I’ve been in I have been extremely disappointed with the staffs lack of ability to answer the «more advanced» questions I had. Also, the selection of fish isn’t what it used to be. Fintastic used to have unique fish, now they have similar selection to everywhere else. I guess the unique fish went away the same time as the knowledgeable staff. I also met their manager Larry. What an egotistical prick! He was rude and demeaning, and appeared to have very little fish knowledge. I don’t know what the owners were thinking when they hired that guy! I was on the fence about continuing to do business there but once I met the manager and saw his interactions with other customers, I was done.

I wanted to write an updated review since my prior one was less than favorable. I received a message from the owner of Fintastic extending their apologies and to let me know that the situation that I spoke of had been addressed and corrected. I am assuming that they had several similar complaints. The owner was extremely polite and very professional. Although I have not revisited the store due to my prior experience, I do believe that if we are ever in that area, we will stop in to see how things go. I am giving them a 4 star rating because of the concern from their owner and the effort to address the problem. I was extremely impressed with how professional he was. (A lesser person could have been belligerent toward me.) Thanks Fintastic for reaching out to me! I look forward to revisiting your store and enjoying it this time around.

If they didn’t have such a great inventory, I would have given them 1 star. Went in looking for some fish for our pond. We tried to get help and some questions answered. You’d think we were asking for money or their children! The cashier couldn’t help us, so she paged Leigh. He cam up to us with a «you’re interrupting what I’m doing, so what do you want and make it quick» attitude. He got us what we wanted and before we could ask to look at some other fish, he was gone. There were 3 or 4 people helping a woman at the counter, and we couldn’t get any help. we wondered around the store for a few minutes the I finally asked a man to help us. He looked at his clipboard, and us then kinda shrugged and asked what we wanted.
I guess customer service is not important there, because we were treated like dirt, with everyone we talked to looking down their noses at us.
We are about to expand our pond and I was looking at a $ 600 filter for the expansion. guess what, I WON’T be buying my supplies there!

Update: after losing some key employees the fresh water section seems to have lost it’s sheen. Tanks are not as well kept as before. Disappointing now.
Great place for aquaria! Prices are higher than your chain stores — but you get knowledgeable people (most of the time).
Love finding the hard-​to-​find fish here (I’m a fresh-​water guy).
We go here every week to see if there’s anything we just have to have.
Pack some patience though — wait time to talk to someone to get a fish or help with something isn’t speedy.

Life is funny and ironic sometimes. When I was a wee teen ravaging the streets of Southern California, I always had this notion old people were odd and boring. They had weird hobbies like radio controlled planes and had very different perspectives on life.
16 years later and here I am, an adult male who has kinda matured and now perusing different hobbies and interests.
Different things like home aquariums. I mean, WTH, Fish? How can boring olé fish be so gratifying? I turned into the dudes I used to make fun of.
Oh well.
So hello Fintastic, Charlotte’s premier aquatic HQ. They stock supplies for all environments: Ponds, salt, fresh, brackish.
Lots of fish. Saltwater, freshwater, skrimps, snails, frogs. They have it all. They even have a shark you can feed on Sundays and I even saw an Alligator Gar in the pond for sale!

I came here during one afternoon for a specific problem. My father’s fish was dying in his pond! So, we stopped by here because we needed a solution fast.
Coming in here, it was huge. All your fish needs can be taken care of here. I feel like fish can get a little pricey, but I think it’s one of those animals that are a lot cheaper than other ones.
Service was awesome. A rep came and asked us what we needed and explained everything we needed to know. I tried to explain the symptoms and what needed to get done and he pointed us in the right direction of what needed to be put in and whatnot.
Overall, we got our supplies and treatment and got out. Nice and easy.

I had bought all my saltwater equipment and fish from them and they were great! I am very impressed with them any time I had any questions or concerns they were very quick to help! Need Fish or equipment this is the place to go, and Thomas the manager is FANTASTIC!!!

wow this place is very cool I was very impressed when I walked into Fintastic because I didn’t know what to expect. They had a large selection of aquariums and an even larger selection of fish and live rock. They even had several different types of my favorite fish (clown fish) which was very cool. If I had the time I could spend hours in here. I didn’t know how complicated keeping a fish can be until I made a visit here. although I loved my visit, I was not impressed with the level of care the jelly fish had. The water was mucky and their was one and a half jelly fish in the tank (use your imagination) and it made me sad.

This is a great local fish store. So much more knowledge than you’d get in a big box pet store. The folks who work here know what they are talking about — and if they do not know an answer to your question, they will find someone on staff who does. Great selection of saltwater and freshwater stock and accessories. I try to steer everyone I know who has or wants a fish tank to shop here.
As for negative review about service, I will concede that sometimes it can get crazy on the weekends and it can be hard to get help quickly b/​c so many customers and too few employees. That said, I’ve learned to lurk near the employees I have dealt with before and catch them as they finish with others or go to the counter and ask for help.