Shipping my fish 4000 miles, looking for reinforcement/sanity check

Zebulon

Allergic
May 9, 2007
211
0
0
At the Bottom, gilling rapidly.
My wife has scored us a relocation to Hawaii! Bear with me a minute cause I have a lot of info to unload here. I am desperate for some sort of feedback other than what my other personalities have to say.

So she is going to the island first, and since our stuff takes six weeks or more to get there via the pacific ocean, I'm staying behind to ship important things to her via "overnight". I intend one of those things to be the fish. By "overnight" they really mean 2 days, this is Hawaii we're talking about afterall.

I have a giant sailfin pleco who I've decided will probably shred a breather bag with his awesome spininess. So I'm ok letting him go, I guess. Growed him up from a little one incher, and he's my big baby, but I can hopefully find him a good home.

The 5 clown loaches I've decided I want to keep if at all possible. So the plan for shipping them began to formulate. I'm thinking of getting the large size kordon bags and putting just two fish per bag. I shouldnt need hot or cold packs and my wife will be waiting for them to arrive so they wont sit outside at all. In the short lead-up time we've got a line on some used tanks she can aquire on the island and setup as a temporary home, and the friendly forumite Leahk has generously offerred up some of her deliciously slimy filter media to get that going. The wife is now pretty well fully trained on the ins and outs of getting as much of a cycle into the tank as possible before they arrive but we know it won't be perfect. She's prepared to do daily wcs if necessary to get them by until I arrive and can take over. Hopefully reducing down to just 5 fish will help keep it manageable from a water quality standpoint.

Crazy? Absolutely. But seems borderline doable.

What do you think? Obviously you all probably want to move into our guest bedroom, but aside from that... :grinyes: Any and all suggestions about methods/considerations/sanity of this plan are greatly desired!

Hawaii!
:headbang2:
 
You might want to check the reglations to bringing in wildlife....it will most likely be prohibitive cost wise.
 
You might want to check the reglations to bringing in wildlife....it will most likely be prohibitive cost wise.

We don't intend to break any laws or do anything unethical, but that being said if anyone has specific experience shipping fish to Hawaii please chime in about legal issues as well. Otherwise we are working with some folks on the islands in obtaining the proper contacts, permits and etc that will be necessary.

It is entirely possible that for reasons of red-tape we will be unable to ship them there at all, but I'm ignoring that possiblity for the time being.
 
I think anything live will have to stay in QT for a time. I think dogs are 14 days, not sure what fish would be.

If you have all the proper shots and paperwork beforehand, dogs do not necessarily have to stay in extended quarantine from what I understand from friends on Maui. This is secondhand info though.
 
Personally Id save the cash from shipping them and get new fish once your in place and have your tanks up and cycled. I could see attempting to ship the fish if you had some rare hard to find expensive species, but other than that I wouldnt attempt shipping.
 
I'd be concerned about the bags popping in flight. I've seen some pretty ugly bad scenarios when people tried to send fish via a plane
 
clown loaches should be relitively easy to find, so it may be a better idea to sell them back to the LFS. it may seem unfavorable, but it will probably be better for you and them. plus, you're going to have to pay to ship their tank, which is going to cost a bunch in itself.
 
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