Help! Shipping disaster

[spoonman1979]

Ordered a dussumieri tang online, he shipped from California Monday at 530 PM. Apparently FedEx had problem and he was stuck in Indianapolis all night and they have no idea when he will arrive here in Virginia. What steps should I take to give him the best chance for survival? I have a cycled quarantine tank ready, stress coat, and Amquel Plus on hand.

[Nina51]

oh sheesh!!

when he arrives, immediately match the salinity in the bag to the salinity in your qt. DO NOT OPEN THE BAG! here's what i do...i turn the bag upside down and use a syringe to poke a tiny hole in the bag and draw out a few drops. turn the bag right side up (this way, no bag water leaks into the qt), float for 15-20 minutes and then release him. leave the lights out and make sure he has some pvc elbows to hide in.

good luck with him and keep us updated!

[snorvich]

What she said. Good luck. Hope it works out.

[indyjaco]

Who was the shipper? LA and BZ are usually around 1.020 for salinity.

[gone fishin]

Nina speaks wisely. Good luck and I hope you have a happy ending.

[snorvich]

Who was the shipper? LA and BZ are usually around 1.020 for salinity.

True. However he would not be bringing their SG to his QT, he would be bringing his QT to their SG. As such, only temperature acclimation is needed.

[alton]

I made a mistake last year by ordering fish from LA a few days before Christmas, never again. The biggest issue you will have is how cold the water will be? They should have plenty of oxygen just let them warm up very slowly, an extra hour in the bag isn't going to kill them but having them warm too quickly will.

[Betta132]

Don't open the bag while warming them, though. EVER. It'll raise the ammonia and badly hurt the fish- possibly even kill them.

[inigomontoya]

Who was the shipper? LA and BZ are usually around 1.020 for salinity.

But, good to know this so you can have your qt already set up and 3/4 full at 1.020, with some rodi and some extremely high sg water already on hand, and then use whichever you need to fine tune with the bag water salinity. That way you don't have to wait for anything to mix.

[spoonman1979]

The fish arrived about noon today. I temperature acclimated him without opening the bag and added him to the quarantine tank. He is doing well so far, swimming normally and nibbling around for food. I added a rock with seaweed but he has not nibbled it so far. He looks healthy. He came from petsolutions, he was packed well. The shipping issue was FedEx's fault, they had mechanical problems. The last fish order was from LA and the trigger I received was a swimming skeleton...

[Fish Biscuit]

Glad to hear he seems to be doing well so far.

When they're shipped here from overseas they spend about 2 days packed up in boxes if you account for the time from when they are packed for shipping until they are unpacked at the US wholesaler.

[Nina51]

how's he doing this evening?

[spoonman1979]

He is swimming around the quarantine tank, seems fine. Doesn't seem to have sampled the seaweed yet, but he is still settling in...

[SDguy]

Glad to hear the shipping disaster turned out OK.

[spoonman1979]

Fish is doing great, chowing down on seaweed and getting fat. FedEx is really dropping the ball here lately. I just replayed this situation on another tang shipped from Blue Zoo, only this guy was shipped to arrive early AM Friday and it still did not arrive until Saturday afternoon. Fortunately this fish seems to be doing well too...

[Nina51]

great to hear! i suspect there will be glitches in just about any delivery system until after the holidays. not that that is an excuse but i would at least take it into consideration when planning to ship anything that breathes. ;)

[sniceley]

Don't want to hijack the thread but does anyone have an issue with such dramatic swings in pH for long shipped fish?

I have a maintenance business and regularly ship fish from California and overseas for clients. From Cali they usually only spend 12-18 hours bagged, but from Indonesia or Fiji it is at least 24 hours. That long in the bag and the pH is generally at 6.4 or less. Good thing is ammonia is all inert but I am always worried that that big of a pH shift will be a problem. I have been using a heavy drip acclimation process over 4 hours to bring back up and adding ammo-lock to be sure ammonia doesn't shift and cause issues.

Is there a better way. I acclimate from 50 to 500+ fish at a time depending on what is coming in a from where. Overseas orders only make sense with large numbers of small to medium sized fish, otherwise the shipping is so high per fish that it's better to buy from a US supplier. Last week I acclimated 100 dwarf angels, 200 firefish, 80 PJ cardinals, 30 butterflies (saddles, longnose, and falcula), 40 sailfin tangs, 10 naso tangs, 50 green chromis, 20 yellow head sleeper gobies, and a harlequin tusk with only 7 total fish lost from shipping and acclimation. Too many to quarantine separately so they all went into the 6000 artificial reef and we just quarantined them in the DT. The chloroquine kills the algae on the structure anyways which is a great bonus and prazi doesn't cause any negatives so no real issue with doing it that way. The only negative is that difficult to feed species can some times be out competed by the current inhabitants, so we tend to quarantine them separately, same with weak looking fish. But if you are fat and look strong after acclimation then straight into the display. I dose chloroquine at 10mg/l and prazi at 2.5 mg/l. Chloroquine is bumped to 15mg/l if any sign of issues after the first few days. UV and ozone turned off, skimmer turned way down because otherwise the diatom die off causes overproduction and loses of 500 gallons or more of water which makes the sump run dry.