Fish arrived by courier in cloudy/milky water

[murraycod]

Hi All,
I received 100 native Australian Pacific Blue Eyes by courier. The fish were 0.5-0.75 inches long and in about 4L/1 gal of water in an oxygen pressurised plastic bag in a polystyrene box with an accompanying ice pack.
Acccording to the supplier they were in transit for 50 hours. I floated the bag for ten minutes, opened it and the water was milky and 6 were dead. They all looked sluggish. I slowly added the fish and their water to 4L/1 gal of the water they'd be going into.
Ten minutes later 50 were dead. I quickly got the live fish into the 300 L/75 gal QT tank with aerators on. Two died immediately. The balance very quickly looked, and continue to look, great.
200 small glass shrimp which arrived from the same sourse, under the same circumstances, all survived. Their water was perfectly clear on arrival.
So, is milky water indicative if lack of oxygen? Is there some other obvious problem? What should I have done?
I appreciate your advice.
Greg :help2:

[rinmouse]

I have no idea, but that's an awful story!

[DAVIDFBT]

You should have acclimated them slower, maybe then more fish would have survived. The best way to acclimate fish after being mailed is drip acclimation. You set up the animals in a little enclosure, then start a siphon with an airline tube from the tank you want them in, then by using a valve, slow the siphon to a drip every second. In about an hour, you can then add the fish to the tank.

[Mgamer20o0]

You should have acclimated them slower, maybe then more fish would have survived. The best way to acclimate fish after being mailed is drip acclimation. You set up the animals in a little enclosure, then start a siphon with an airline tube from the tank you want them in, then by using a valve, slow the siphon to a drip every second. In about an hour, you can then add the fish to the tank.
not always true.

the milky water prob was fish decay. also often they ship in ro water too so depending on your tap water added your own water to the bag could have killed them. what happens in a lower ph the ammonia isnt deadly like it is in higher ph. so when you added your tap water in the ph goes up making the ammonia deadly. sometimes its better to match the temp then net the fish out of the bag.

good luck with the fish ill be on the look out for pics. i am trying to get some my self.

[wataugachicken]

did you add any chemicals to the bag when you opened it to neutralize the ammonia that had built up over 50 hours of shipping? god, i wish you'd asked us first instead of coming to us after the damage was done.

when the fish are in the bag, they are using up the oxygen and putting out ammonia and CO2. both of those serve to make the water more acidic (lowers pH), which makes the ammonia less toxic to the fish. When the bag is opened, the concentration of CO2 decreases and the pH of the water rises, and the toxicity of the ammonia rises along with it. that's most likely why so many of them died so quickly in the ten minutes after opening the bag - the ammonia became extremely toxic. once they were put into the tank, that threat was gone.

final points:

1. i hope you can get a proper refund!
2. Don't let them ship that many fish in such a small bag to you again - even if you have to pay a few dollars more, it's better to have extra water volume. That doesn't seem very professional to me, half-inch fish or not.
3. Add a few drops of Prime or some other ammonia-neutralizing product to the shipping water as soon as you open the bag, or mix the drops into a cup or so of new water and pour that into the bag right away. Or like Mgamer said, net them out and into clean temp-matched water.

[wetwillyjoe69]

i net my fish also. ive only lost a couple from netting, but shipping is the underlying cause to blame. it seems to work for me

[justahannah]

I have no doubt that milky shipping water is caused by fish decay. I work for a PetSmart, and every Friday we receive about 30 large boxes (2'x2'x2') full of bagged fish to put on the floor. There are always some fatalities and I've observed the bags with dead fish are always milky while the bags with 100% survival rate are always clear.

[txbetta]

As a receiver of many fish (nearly in the double digit thousands now lol) I can safely say that milky water is always caused by dead arrivals. When you receive fish in the manner I do, shipped from Thailand to the US it is generally fair to expect 1 out of every 100 to not make it. My own record with shipping out is much better thank god.

But anyway, in my case, there is always 1 fish per bag. In the bags with dead fish the water is murky, and the water with the live fish the water is clear or slightly cloudy.

[Reddog80p]

Hope you snapped some pics of the milky water/dead fish prior to disposing them. Sorry for your loss.

[mel_20_20]

Sorry for your loss Greg.

[murraycod]

Thank you all for your kind words of wisdom. I didn't call for advice prior to shipping since the supplier came well recommended and I'd prepared to act on arrival of the fish exactly as they'd directed.
I kept a dozen in a pond when I lived in Brisbane. They are very hardy liitle fish, eat mozzie larvae voraciously and don't eat tadpoles.
I work every waking moment on this system, and to have stuffed up like this is quite upsetting.
Thanks again for your advice.
Greg