We hired Cliff Hughes owner of Crystal Oceans to set up and maintain our new salt water tank on a weekly basis. His ad within the Yellow Pages clearly states "On-Time Tank Maintenance". Cliff charged us over $2000.00 for wrong parts and sick fish and absolutely no maintenance whatsoever.
Since his disappearance, we have hired a marine biologist to take care of the fish and he revaluated our tank needs. We have now had to spend over $4,000.00 so far to fix all of Cliff's mistakes. He didn't have the right filtering equipment, skimmer, chiller, sump, and the list goes on. He simply took our money, dropped off water and fish, and disappeared. He does not care about the health of the fish or the tank.
We were informed by our new technician that Cliff used water collected from the Intracostal waterway instead of true ocean water. Aquarium quality water must be collected 15 miles out in order to maintain purity. The fact that Cliff used FREE and unpure Intracostal waterway water was verified by the salinity in the water when the marine biologist tested it.
He says this is a common practice when individuals (such as Cliff) run aquarium maintenance companies out of their vans or garages because direct Intracostal water is free and then they charge full price for the water to an unsuspecting customer. Cliff also never quarantined the fish. Quarantining is a very important and standard practice when introducing fish into a new tank.
We were also informed that this is a common practice with such small operations as they often do not have the right equipment and/or capacity to quarantine the fish appropriately. This almost always results in sick or dead fish. Cliff never even ran initial tests for salinity, nitrate, nitrite, copper, or various others that are necessary when maintaining the balance within any tank. After he dumped the fish in he simply left and did not return.
Initially, we requested only one porcupine puffer when Cliff asked how we'd like to stock the tank. He delivered 3 other types of puffers and two box fish. The long horn box fish does not do well in captivity at all. Both box fish do best in reef tanks. Our tank is a fish only tank due to the fact that the puffers eat most coral and crustaceans. These five fish should NOT have even been placed together in the same tank.
Cliff gave us improper care instructions for the fish.initially he told us to only feed them once every 3 days. We now know that these fish should be fed at least twice daily. I suppose his reasoning behind telling us not to feed them just enough to keep them alive is due to the fact that he knew he had installed a substandard filteration filter and no skimmer.
Fish that don't eat don't produce as much waste. Once we informed him they had ick (after much personal research) we were informed that we were not to feed them at all. Our marine biologist said that was the worst thing we could possibly do as to not feed our sick fish.
He stated that obviously for any organism to fight off an infection it is necessary that they eat well. The food Cliff brought for us to feed them was intended for much larger fish and was not appropriate for these fish in the first place.
When we called Cliff two days after the fish were in the tank with our initial concern that the fish were sick he told us that if one looked like it was going to die we should throw it into the Intracostal behind our house because if one dies the whole tank dies. This is the only piece of information that Cliff provided that seems to be correct.
All five fish are poisonous fish that release a toxin that will wipe out the whole tank if one dies. We opted not to throw the fish into the waterway and about another week went by with still no sign of Cliff, no water tests or changes no follow up at all.
The really sad part is that Cliff Hughes lives only a few blocks away from our home. He informed us of this when he took the jobstill no service even as he knows our fish are dying.
Cliff finally showed up another week later with the top to the tank that he had ordered (and we had paid a 50% deposit on) through Tenecor. Had we not hired our marine biologist to fix the tank in Cliffs absence all the fish would have already been dead.
Our whole tank would have had to have been drained, cleaned, and new fish would have had to have been purchased. He did not offer one word of explanation as to where he had been all this time. He simply un-wrapped the tank top and placed it on the floor.
He then demanded the remaining balance of 50% for the top. We told him that there were obviously many mistakes made installing and stocking the tank and no maintenance efforts had been made therefore we were not paying him any more money. He picked up the top and left our home leaving all the original packaging on the floor.
We demand our 50% deposit returned immediately along with at least half of the money we paid to Cliff returned. Should Cliff not respond to this request we will take this to Small Claims Court. We have the full documentation, pictures, and the expert testimony of a marine biologist.
We will also take further action such as filing complaints with his vendors, county, city, state, IRS, and every complaint site on the world-wide-web so that he does not take advantage of another poor customer again.
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