River City Aquatics - Austin TX

Shop Name: River City Aquatics
Location: Austin, TX
Shop Address: 12108 Roxie Dr
Shop Website: http://www.rivercityaquatics.com
Reviewed By: Dalto
Date Of Review: September/2006
Overall: Good
Times Visited: More Than Ten Visits
Freshwater Selection: Fair
Saltwater Selection: Fair
Stock  Selection: Good
Staff: Very Good
Prices: Fair
Comments: River City Aquatics or RCA for short is an interesting store indeed.  When you walk in you are greeted with a room filled with tanks and supplies at relatively high prices.  To your left is a room with a reasonable variety of marine species.  To your right is the freshwater room.  They have a poor to fair selection of community fish and new world cichlids.  However, their specialty is African cichlids and they have a truly amazing selection of these.  Not only is most of the fish room filled with Africans, but they have an entire additional facility out back filled with African cichlids.  I have never seen more African cichlids in one place than here at RCA.  Their presentation is good and their tanks are well maintained.  The staff is actually quite knowledgeable, the people there are genuinely excited about fish and fish keeping.  All in all, this is a great store for talking about fish and is THE store for African cichlids.  Highly recommended if this is your goal.

I have bought several fish and corals from this store, and used to visit regularly since it was the closest to my house. Unfortunately I made the mistake of hiring them to do some maintenance on my tank. After they put about 50 pounds of UNCURED live rock in my tank, the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels all spiked, killing nearly everything in my tank. Rather than apologize, the owner then had the nerve to bar me from the store for not wanting to pay for this “service.” I will avoid them like the plague they unleashed in my tank from now on.

As an update to my original review I would like to say that this has become the fish store I visit the most. The staff is superb and with their recent expansion they are displaying a lot more variety.