Shipping live coral and fish

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ckcdrummer

Feeder Fish
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Feb 21, 2012
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To begin I'm not really sure where this thread should even go so sorry if its in the wrong place. In the next week or so I'm going to be starting a small business and Ill be registering for my fictitious business name and basically Ill be selling live coral and fish out of my large saltwater tank and hopefully expand in time. My question is how would I go about shipping live coral and fish? I have never had any experience with shipping live animals or which shipment companies are able to ship live animals. Can anybody help out?
 
just making guesses, you would need packaging materials, bags, an oxygen tank and several tanks
 
Well I'm planning to start small, I've got a 150 gallon tank that will be filled with frag racks and I plan to start with just Coral and then expand in the number of tanks and then hopefully fish as well.


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You are better off selling locally. With shipping, you can run into problems - delays, misdirected packages, temperature fluctuations, etc. If you use paypal, expect lots of claims. Not trying to scare you or discourage you, just letting you know of the pitfalls you face.

Add to that the fact that you never shipped fish before, you have a bit of learning to do.
 
joe jaskot said:
You are better off selling locally. With shipping, you can run into problems - delays, misdirected packages, temperature fluctuations, etc. If you use paypal, expect lots of claims. Not trying to scare you or discourage you, just letting you know of the pitfalls you face.

Add to that the fact that you never shipped fish before, you have a bit of learning to do.
Click to expand...

Yeah I was thinking I would just go local at first but then I thought that being able to ship would expand in sales a lot more then just locally. I think I'm just gonna start local and learn more about shipping before I try it. Thanks anyways!


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I would get an official business going (Lic and insured etc...). Deal locally for a couple of years, then step to shipping. Selling as a business opens you up to a lot of liability that you need to be aware of. Make sure all of your bases are covered. When you take the step from selling some frags as a hobbiest to selling for profit on a wider scale, it can be a very big step.
 
As a CPA, I can tell you that definitely want to set up an LLC as your business. Best to separate your business activity from your personal activity.
 
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