Coral Oasis

This place just killed my aquarium. I’ve had a fresh water tank for 5 years. I’ve bought school fish from this place before sometimes with 1 or 2 dying relatively quickly, but I always figured it was user error. I bought 3 Bala Sharks and a Beta yesterday. Within hours all 3 sharks were dead. Less than 24 hours my 5 year old sucker and shrimp were dead. Currently the Beta is floating around the top of the water which is not a normal tank spot for Betas. I wish I would have read other reviews of this place first. It has been devastating as this is a hobby I share with my 9 year old daughter. She has literally been watching the tank all weekend to see what dies next. Going off the other reviews I’ll check in with San Bar in Costa Mesa and see if they have any suggestions.
Edit: the Beta just died. Seriously, my entire tank died within 24 hours.

This is a very mediocre reef store. I wouldn’t recommend it for beginners, because there are lots of unhealthy animals, so you really need to have a trained eye to spot the healthy animals that are safe to buy. Additionally, most of the employees obviously don’t take any pride in the hobby, and don’t have any valuable knowledge to offer beginners.

Not worth drive
dirty tanks
The fish look like they are about to die :(the coral are blan no color at all
Skip this place

This store has plenty of space and potential. Unfortunately many of their tanks were completely empty and the coral selection was minimal. Very cool shallow floor tank at the entrance though.

The first time I came to Coral Oasis I noticed that half of the store is dedicated to freshwater fish and the other half to saltwater. They carry a wide selection of freshwater fish and freshwater plants in store at very reasonable prices. I am not a salt water person so I cannot comment on their salt water selections.
The bettas are located in front of the freshwater section. I can’t help but noticed that the bettas at this store are healthier and tougher looking than the bettas I found elsewhere. The betta here are mostly blue with a wider and sturdier body built. They were constantly swimming around and flaring at each other. I purchased a female betta from Coral Oasis and named her Wolf (because she is the swiftest hunter I have ever owned). My experience is that colorful bettas with long fins (halfmoon etc) are more prone to diseases and die relatively early. The dull blue colored ones with shorter fins live much longer. It is nice that Coral Oasis still carries the tougher breed of bettas.
The store staff is very knowledgable about fish. Because I had such an interest in betta, they showed me the betta pairs they were breeding in the store. Overall I had a good experience at Coral Oasis. I will be coming back again.

I am giving this LFS 5 stars purely because their customer service is amazing. Ordered a lid from Kathryn for my 120 gallon. It was a little complicated and we had to go back and forth numerous times to get what I needed. With them and the manufacturer. At the end of the day got my kid and it is perfect. Hats off to this place. Great customer service! If I had salt water I’d buy from them but my tank is Africans.

We used to come here all the time until the one visit that changed it for us. We bought a few fish for our tank from their store and asked if they would be compatible with our current fish at home. The sales woman said these new fish specifically are indeed compatible and that if anything were to happen just bring them back. We also bought some snails for the algae which she also said would be fine… Well it turns out she was WRONG. Our new fish were being attacked by our old fish and were picking on our new snails. I created a barrier so the snails could hide in. Since the sales woman told me I could bring them all back if there were any issues and get store credit, I decided to save the snails lives and take back the ones that had already died and get credit for all of them. So I take them back and it’s the main manager there with long pony tail. He says he won’t give me full credit for the three 4 dollar each snails as he doesn’t know if they’ll live, and for the 2 fish we brought back (one of them being dead) he said the same. That the live fish I returned could die at any time & the other fish I returned dead is my fault. He said I shouldn’t listen to other people because they don’t know anything about fish. Well that’s funny because the person who told me the fish would be ok was YOUR employee. He was a total jerk and completely ruined our experience for us. We haven’t been back since.

Good people
Good store
Family run business
If u want to support the small shop
This is it
Good prices /​selections

Been coming here for a few months. There was a younger lady who was SO helpful. She answered every question imaginable and always tested my water for free. (if she was still here I would give 5 stars)
However, I don’t know where she went, I’m assuming she is the owner’s daughter. Now there is just the older couple running it. They barely speak English and are not eager to help. They suddenly started charging a dollar per water test, including salinity!
They have an ok selection on corals, they are lacking in fish and invert options though. Nothing is labeled properly which gets confusing. Prices aren’t bad, but they aren’t good either. Time to try another store.

Store is set up nicley with great displays. People were willing to help. Have a lot of tanks but not a large amount of marine life in them. Corals looked nice.

This place be awesome if the staff didn’t suck so much. They don’t care about their customers. They simply want your money. They try to make you feel like an idiot even if you know more then them. If your going to simply blow money with out care then by all means shop here but if your looking for a shop that’s going to help you out and hear you out DEFINITELY DO NOT COME HERE. I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt but every time they never fail to disappoint. Do yourselves a favor and stay away from this place and invest your money and time somewhere else because this place is not worth it.

They’re super nice here and have a nice storefront with a wide variety of both saltwater and fresh water fish and unique corals. …I can spend quite a bit of time just wandering around the aisles looking in the tanks. the guy who works there is really helpful answering questions and really knows his stuff. However, I wish they had a better exchange policy. We purchased a pretty blue tang from here and once we put it in our saltwater reef tank, we realized it had ich. 2 days later, it was dead and I risked infecting the rest of my tank. When we told them that they sold us a fish with ich, they were not willing to replace it and said all sales are final once you leave the store and they dont take returns. Oh well. I will still come here to buy corals and everything but I will inspect my fish closely before I purchase them here just to make sure they’re not sick.

I got my filter, sand, coral, and some shrimp at this store. And i also have two clown fishes here, they are great in health and the worker at this store trwat me like im his family i love that guy Danny :) you should ask for him whenever you come, he got a lot experiences in fishes, corals that’s will help a lot

I live pretty close so I often come in and chat it up with Katherine and Dave. And oogle over the saltwater creatures and colors that I am not dedicated enough to get into. They are super helpful and always willing to help with questions especially when they are not busy. Family own/​ran business with a great selection of frags and salt water animals including a wide variety of shrimps and crabs. Being a freshwater hobbies I have found it hard to find places that carry a decent selection of freshwater fish and supplies. But I am happy to say that Coral Oasis has dedicated 2 full rows of freshwater fish and they actually are knowledgeable about it. I just picked up my first set of Discus and they were very helpful in giving me all kinds of pointers.
They also carry baby brine shrimp eggs $ 6 for those of you on the hunt for some.

I bought a clown fish here and it came with ichs — Died in 3 days. It also infected my other clownfish — Died 3 days after. Thought is was bad luck. Went there to buy some Pukani rocks. There were aiptesia anemones with the rocks… bad news.
These guys are mostly about sales. They don’t explain much and answers are short. Prices are not cheap and they don’t give you the friendly discounts with volume purchases that other local fish stores offer.
They sold me a fish that is sick, and also sold me the medicine for the sick fish they sold me and eventually died… and also killed my original fish.

I have two tanks both are being stocked with Coral Oasis fish. The freshwater at work is cichlids with a large puffer. I have only had one die not sure why but the other three have been going strong.
I am starting a saltwater for home. Husband and wife are very knowledgeable and did not try to sell me something I did not need. I am going with a reef tank and compared prices on high end lights and found most to be within a few dollars of their price. I did find the exact same for $ 100 less but I tend to look everywhere.
This is a saltwater friendly store. So if you need saltwater supplies, live rock, and different animals you will find it here.
Freshwater 2 aisles not bad but mostly cichlids. (which I like any way) Their salt water is running through 8 tanks of live rock so I would guess the water should stay really clean.
BTW: Get a frequent buyer card for $ 10 for every $ 100 which keeps me going!

I have 2 professionally maintained salt tanks, one has corals and fish (55 gal) and the other is a 30 gal hex with BTA (2^nd one)…After about 200.00 in purchases in about 3 months I’m giving up on Coral Oasis. I’ve had my tank professionally maintained so it’s not a user error, not a water or salt issue like they try to blame it off on. Their fish are sick, plain and simple, after about 10 days they get dots and then I take them out, put in a hospital tank and within hours, they are done.
First purchases = 50.00 and were clowns and a bubble-​tip anemone. Dead within about 10-​days of bringing them home. I thought ok, perhaps it’s something I did or maybe adding too many fish with the anemone (2) — give them one more chance because you can always buy something and when it’s a live animal then you run the risk.
Second purchases = 100.00 another BTA and a Dory fish — 5 little hermit crabs and some corals. 1 Hermit crab dead within 24-​hours, Dory SATURATED/​COVERED with ick and dead within 10-​days. We got Dory home and she just hid in the plants so it was hard to ever really see her to rate her condition, she’d come out when the white light went off and the evening blue lights came on — it was darker and harder to see her. Then the other night I thought I saw her by the filter and she didn’t look like she was moving, DESTROYED my tank ripping out plants and rocks to get her out before she potentially harmed my other fish (2 yellow tangs and 2 clowns)…
I put her in a hospital tank with blue water and air — within hours she was gone. I put her in a baggie and to the freezer and then called FishGuyRuss. He came over the next day and my water was fine, my other fish were inspected and they are ok and so now I get on Unilocal and find it’s happening to more than just me! I take Dory in and show her to Danny at the store on Wednesday.
I went in and spoke with Danny (who gave me a line of bullshit a mile long) and then kept asking me ‘did i sell you a dead fish’ and I kept telling him no, you sold me a sick and DYING FISH. Now I have to go back and talk to Kathryn because he’s blamed it off on her for selling me the fish.
I’ve gone to other LFS and haven’t had problems with their fish. I buy them, they live, my fish tank guy (FishGuyRuss) is awesome, San Bar is great, if you buy a fish then decide later you don’t want it or it’s not a good fit with your other fish you can take them back for a credit. Not the same with this place and probably because they KNOW THEIR FISH ARE SICK! Coral Oasis has ok corals but their fish KEEP DYING! The other fish in my tank with theirs are not sick and do not have crap on them nor are they acting funny, it’s JUST THE CORAL OASIS fish. The only commonality of the problem is the source.
I’m going back to talk with Kathryn and will update my post again, but the fact is the only problem has been the fish from this place, sad that they won’t back anything up and blamed it on me — I even took them water — excuses, excuses. Danny kept telling me we’ve been in business for blah blah amount of years and we don’t sell fish. Well, I’m here to tell you YES THEY DO. I should have known better when their tanks have dead fish in them, even the coral tank has had dead gobies and I’d pointed it out but you loose a few here and there when they’re turning them over so quickly. But you DO NOT SCREW your customers, come on!
LFS should probably be a little nicer to their repeat customers; fish geeks aren’t stupid and Danny, seriously, you talk to people like they are… pretty sad.

This store is quite clean and has some really nice frag tanks and quite a few saltwater fish (A bit light on the freshwater fish however)
Overall they have an interesting selection of saltwater fish, but their fish don’t seem very healthy. One of their tanks had some large blue tangs in there with really bad cases of HLLE which is quite sad to see. Initially I thought they were being quarantined and such, but in truth those fish were «ready» for sale.
You’d think that such a clean store would have some good and healthy fish, but unfortunately this isn’t the case.
Now aside from the fish, the owners wife is quite rude while her husband is quite the opposite. Now I’m all up for conversations with the owners of a store, but he followed me through out the store and basically almost talked me to death. Not a fun experience that’s for sure.
If you plan on buying fish from this place, I highly recommend having a quarantine tank ready because you WILL have to treat for something (I highly advise a quarantine tank period though).

It’s a bummer because this place is pretty, but I got ich after getting a few fish from here. Normally I would just say «oh well, that’s what happens,» but the owner also refused to take back some product after we just purchased it — we couldn’t even get store credit.
I’ll find another store, thanks.

I’m never going to this place again, ever. I’ve purchased fish here twice and both times I had ich in my tank within a week afterward. That, and the owner wouldn’t let me return a product that he personally told me he would when I bought it.
The store really does look nice once you walk in, but I’m done here.