basically my friend imports livestock in general, hes dealt with this exporter before and no, it will not be *****-shipped, it will go straight to the docks here and I think Ill be picking it up. Im also worried about the acclimation process Im thinking about pick up a couple of tanks as quarantine tanks to make sure that most diseases, if any are killed off. The fish are in qurantine tanks for 2 days at the exporter so hopefully that helps alittle. He has a DOA warranty also. His average DOA is basically between 5-10% every shipment. If more than 5% dies, then he will deduct it off the next shipment. So if you think about 100 fish, maybe 5 or 10 die, the money from that will go towards the next shipment. Ill probably be ordering a couple of extras of everything since I know theres alot of last minute buyers. Sorry if I dont make sense right now but Im at work so I had to type this in seriously 15 seconds. lol