Topic: Shipping fish

[Christine T]

So my fertile cichlids have quickly left me with a tightly stocked fry tank, one LFS here doesn't buy fish and the other is often heavily stocked with cichlids so they said they won't take them, and there are no fish clubs in my area-Soooooo i'm thinking about shipping options-but to be honest, it seems quite intimidating.

What i'm looking for is information on how people safely ship fish ex) how many fish to a bag, what size bags, how do you get the dang air in the bag lol, what are these heat pack things, and where can i get this stuff etc?

I'm not even sure i'm going to get into shipping, but i would like to get some decent info, b/c if it's not a royal pain i may start-otherwise i have no idea what i am going to do with my fish


THANKS

[mpp]

what kind of cichlids are they?
mike

[Lori]

Check out this thread, Christine:
http://www.petfish.net/forum/index.php/topic,7746.0.html

[Christine T]

Mike,
They are African Cichlids, Yellow Labs, Yellow Tail Acei, and Demasoni.

Lori,
Thanks, i was looking through that thread earlier, there is a lot of good info.

[mikedmatthews]

what size?  small ones, 1 inch or less, you can usually get away with 6 to a bag if you do it right.  also sometimes on small ones you could use breathers, but for me cichlids seem to like poking through those with their dorsals.

[Christine T]

I guess the size would depend on how long i had the fish, some are over an inch.

Yeah, i don't get the whole breather bag thing?

[mikedmatthews]

breathers extend the time a fish can stay bagged, but they are susceptible to pointy things like sharp fins.  also you can't use heat packs with them as the chemistry of the heat pack eats up the oxygen you hope to exchange into the bag. 

[Christine T]

interesting, yeah i was just reading about them on kensfish also.

So, if i were to use regular fish bags, how would one go about getting the air into the bag? 

[mikedmatthews]

i just do a fast grab and tie it off.

[Lori]

I put my fish in the bag, hold it together and slip in an airline.  Once it's full and tight, (not too tight, you don't want it to burst) I tie it off or rubberband it.