I have never purchased fish
over the internet so I was
curious ... the ones you
buy at the stores can only
be in the bags for about
1 hour, how are they packaged
to survive a 24 hour trip?
Thanks again!
-Chelsea G.
Click on the images above.
Reply. Hello
Chelsea. Thank you for emailing us your question.
We have been shipping fish all over the world since
1969. (Note: We no longer ship outside the United
States.) In the beginning we learned a lot from
some very knowledgeable people who were happy to
share what they'd learned with us.
●
Ship only really
healthy fish.
●
Ship in fresh
clear aquarium water. Not in tap water.
●
Most bags used
to ship fish are not the right type of bags.
We use special bags designed for shipping live
fish. When you get your fish from us, look carefully
at the bag and the metal clip that seals the
bag, and you'll see that we use special bags.
●
We have several
different sizes of bags, and we pack each fish
in the right size bag for that fish.
●
Fill the bag with only about 25% aquarium water.
●
Usually we fill
the rest of the bag with pure oxygen, but air
breathing fish such as Bettas and Corydoras
Catfish are shipped with air and not pure oxygen.
●
We single bag
many of the fish. One fish to a bag.
●
The corners of
the bags are crimped, so the fish won't get
caught in the corners.
●
Seal the bag
with about 1 or 2 inches of slack.
●
Put the first
bag in a second bag in case the first bag leaks.
●
Ship inside a
corrugated cardboard carton with a Styro Foam
liner inside the carton to protect the fish
from rapid changes in temperature.
●
Be sure the fish
are in complete darkness during shipment.
●
Give the person
receiving the fish information about how to
prepare to receive and acclimate the fish.
Occasionally I visit
a pet store and see 25 feeder goldfish going into
a small bag that is mostly full of cloudy water,
with only a small amount of air in the bag. I worry
that the fish won't make it to the car in the parking
lot, let alone survive an hour in the bag for the
trip home.
Incidentally, not
all shipments take 24 hours, many times it takes
less than 18 hours and sometimes as long as 36 hours.
This is a long time for the fish, and they must
be packed just right to ensure a safe trip for them.
Chelsea, we hope
that answers your question, but here is a story
about shipping fish that we hope you find interesting.
Back in the 1970s
we were raising lots of cichlids in our parent's
basement. We had an advertisement in TFH Magazine
and FAMA Magazine each month, and we got fish orders
from all over the world. In particular we had a
very good customer in Europe (but at the present
time we do not ship out of the United States), who
bought lots of cichlids from us.
After they'd get
a shipment of fish from us, they'd write back saying
that the water in the bags was clear, the fish were
just great, and they wondered what we put in the
water. In particular they really wanted to know
what tranquillizer we used.
They had tried adding
Sandow 222 or some such stuff to their shipping
water, and it didn't seem to help the fish. But
it was obvious to them that we had found something
really good to put in the water
to
preserv the
fish.
We wrote back several
times and said things like, "No, no, we haven't
got anything special that we put in the water, no
tranquillizers, no drugs, no chemicals, just good
water, good fish, carefully packed, etc., etc."
But they were sure that we had a secret, and apparently
it bother them that we wouldn't share the secret
that we didn't have with them.
Finally one day they
phoned me with an ultimatum, "Tell us what you put
in the water, or we won't buy any more fish from
you." I tried to make sense with them, but it didn't
work, and we lost one of our biggest customers.
Our father was very good at business, and I told him this story.
He said that we were just young and learning about
these kinds of things, and though it seems very
important now, it's not so important in the long
run and not to worry too much about it.
He went on to explain
that one of the big faults that many people in business
have is that they think there is something magic,
like Sandow 222 or something else, that they can
add at the last minute that will "fix" things. This
searching for a "fix" prevents them from learning
how to get things right in the first place.
To do anything well
it's important is to find out what the crucial factors
are, then to focus on doing them right each time,
and finally to develop a process that ensures that
those crucial factors get done right each time.
Over the following years I found out that my father's
advice applies to a lot more than just about how
to pack fish.
The advertisement, shown below, links to
this advertiser's web site.
Click
here
to verify our "PayPal Reputation",
which shows we have been selling on PayPal since 2002,
and we've sold items to thousands of satisfied customers.
Holliday Gift Idea
PayPal Gift Certificates
Click on
the orange button, just below, to buy
a PayPal Gift Certificate for
someone, who loves pet fish.
Best Selling
Books
Click here
now to order The Simple
Guide to Freshwater
Aquariums, a bestselling
reference, offering an
easy-to-understand look at
setting up and maintaining a
successful first freshwater
aquarium.
Click here
now
to order The New Marine
Aquarium: Step-By-Step setup
and stocking Guide, the best
selling book about starting
a new marine aquarium.
Click
here
now to order 500 Freshwater
Aquarium Fish: A Visual
Reference to the Most
Popular Species, a beautiful
book, lovingly written and
illustrated, with
information for the beginner
or the longtime enthusiast.
Click here
now to order Fancy Goldfish:
A Complete Guide ... by Eric L. Johnson,
DMV, and Richard E. Hess. The most
encompassing and thorough treatment of the
fancy goldfish hobby to date. Hardcover with
176 pages.
•
Unlimited FREE Two-Day Shipping
•
No minimum order size
•
One-Day shipping for $3.99/item
•
Unlimited, commercial-free, instant
streaming
of 5,000 movies and TV shows.
•
Join Amazon Prime for $79/year. Click
here
now to learn more about Amazon
Prime.
About our Fish Photographs ...
Almost all the photographs and videos, shown on this web site, were taken
by us in our aquariums of our fish. Compare the healthy,
beautiful, energetic fish in our beautiful aquariums to the
fish in our competitors pictures. Their fish often look thin
with clamped fins and poor color.
We buy the highest quality fish, produced by the best fish
farms or caught by the best collectors of wild fish, then we take incredibly good care of our fish in our beautiful aquariums. If you compare the pictures on this site to our competitors pictures, you can instantly see, our fish and aquariums are better!
;^ }
Will the fish you get from us look like the fish in our pictures? No! This is similar to buying kittens and puppies, that will change as they grow to become cats and dogs. We stock and ship fish that are the ideal size to sell. Not so small that they will not do well when shipped. Yet not so big that they have become much more expensive. The fish in almost all of our pictures were young fish like the ones we have for sale that we raised up, and you can too!
How
to Customize
this Page
If this web page looks too small or too narrow, hold down
the keyboard key marked "Ctrl" then press down on the key
marked +, and this web page should get bigger. If you overdo it,
and this page gets too big, hold down the same "Ctrl" key
and press down on the key marked - to make this page
smaller.
Repeat, until this
page looks just right to you. In this way you can customize
the appearance of our website in your computer. This tip
will work simultaneously on all the pages in this website,
and your computer should remember what you've done the next
time you come back to this site, unless you're using an
ancient version of a browser. ;^
o
The advertisement, shown below, links to
this advertiser's web site.
IMPORTANT:
Your use of this website constitutes your acceptance
of our Privacy
Agreement and Terms of Use including our Disclaimer.
Click here to
read
our Disclaimer, and click
here to
read our Privacy Agreement.
Click
here for
our street address, phone number, fax, and email
address.
Click
here for information about advertising on this website.
AquariumFish.net
is not affiliated with
AquariumFish.com.
