Shipping Disaster

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Glad to see that everything worked out on this shipment.



As far as shipping fish, some of you may find the following paper written by the folks at Singapore's AVA (the ornamental fish shipping capitol of the world) to be an interesting read.


Recent developments and improvements in
ornamental fish packaging systems for air transport


www.vliz.be/imisdocs/publications/54592.pdf


Some key findings from this paper ..........

Nutritional prophylaxis using vitamin C supplementation to enhance both the stress resistance and disease resistance of fish, which significantly improved the cumulative mortality of the fish.

The optimal duration for starving small fish should be limited to 1 day only, as prolonged starvation may have adverse effects on the stress resistance of the fish,
and hence increase post-shipment mortality.

The use of low salt concentrations to counter osmoregulatory stress in both the shipping bags, and in the recovery tanks post shipping.

The fact that mortality is stress-mediated and typically occurs during the 7 day recovery period, NOT during shipping itself.
 
Neil where do you get all this info lol. Makes alot sense, here in Toronto there are ALOT of asian operated fish stores and they are constantly getting huge fish, arrowans for one and discus at huge sizes and we all know how delicate discus are, shipped and recieved in great condition so there methods must be very good!
 
I have a friend in town that used to import Asian aros from Singapore on a regular basis so I was always curious as to their shipping methods, water parameters before & after, etc. I've seen some pretty shoddy shipping methods used by vendors based in parts of SE Asia, but vendors in Singapore definitely know what they are doing. When one considers that a single high end Asain aro can sell for thousands of $$$, they had best know what they are doing when shipping overseas in the dead of winter.
 
MonsterFishKeepers.com