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

Lol Ken, nice. I'm sorta attached to these particular fellas and intrigued by the challenges of shipping. After reading so much and then getting the chance to move far away, I thought why not?

Turns out the paperwork is only 5 dollars, the fish do not spend any time in quarantine they pass it directly on to your home address or can be picked up. They have a special fish area which is temp controlled and etc and apparently are swell folk. UPS gets it there in 48 hours.

We are very optimistic. The trial is all in acquiring and timing the install of the new tank. I noticed a 300g on craigs list ;-)
 
Is it ok or desireable to double bag with kordon or will that cause it to malfunction?
 
can you get O2 tablets for transportation?
one fish per bag would probably be better - you are not putting all your eggs in one basket that way :P

can you get the bags in some sturdy cardboard boxes? and fill the boxes with styrofoam bits or eve better - cotton wool? (for temperature isolation)

that way your fish will allways be in dark, wich is good to reduce stress, the bags will be protected from outside trauma, and the temp should be constant (unless if overheating is a problem).
 
O2 tablets? Using Kordon breather bags... Also not aware of transparent box and packaging, so fish are going to necesarily be in the dark.

Was hoping for more professional feedback. I have a plan gleened from reading forum posts which I've mixed up together with a success story from another couple who moved onto the islands. They had zero loss.

While I appreciate every angle because I want to be sure, the reasons a few of you have for not shipping fish to Hawaii seem unfounded. There are no legal issues, no financial burdens, no quarantine, high tech bags and techniques, even a shipper (UPS) who is willing to work with declared live fish at that distance. Maybe there's someplace I can document this process for future people to refer to including survival rates, bag and packaging failure etc, anything that can go wrong. Our friends had a 100% survival rate. for about 10 medium sized fish so we are still very optimistic.

Any more pro's wanna chime in with anything as I push through with the plan?
 
Last edited:
I have been thinking about your shipping your fish ever since I first read the thread and mentioned about QT. Now that I know you have checked into all of the legal stuff, I got to thinking about your pleco and having to get rid of it. Tupperware now has liquid proof containers. I don't imagine they are cheap, but if you put him in one of those and then ran a waterproof type tape around the seal just for insurance that the lid wouldn't come off, you might just be able to ship him as well. Just a thought.

By the way good luck with the move!
 
I'm not going to ship the big guy. Already applied for the permit and his name wasn't on it so that settles that.

Which brings me to my next point. I was reminded again today about a feature of Hawaiian culture called "Hawaii Time". In a nutshell, there really is no such thing as high-priority on the islands and that applies to government agencies as much extra as you might expect. If I do not get my permit on time then all of this planning will be for nothing.

I'm trying to convince a friend to be a backup to hold them for some extra days and then ship for me after the permit arrives, but there's some obvious hesitation in that. He hasn't done the reading so I'd be trusting him not to hork it up. I do have the materials to ship them, though. Things are moving along very quickly now and my anxiety is beginning to run wild.

I want to ensure I'm covering all the bases. So I'm considering to have someone experienced who loves loaches on backup to purchase the fish, to whom I could ship to on the last possible day if I haven't gotten the permit in time. Maybe someone like that would read this post and send me a PM and we could work out some tentative details.
 
i wouldn't worry about bags popping in flight as long as you maybe talk to people who regularly ship airport to airport to find out exactly how they do the bags. that's if you use any regular fish bags, breather bags won't pop, no air pressure to build up inside the bag. most distributors and even a few of the vendors here ship via airport to airport. scan some aquabid auctions to see who offers that kind of shipping, or join the forums there.

not that we can't give you the right advice, but they're sorta in the business of shipping fish safely many different ways. they may have a wider variety of ideas/more specific answers.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom