Coral Shipping via newspaper

[Labman48076]

After hearing Eric Borneman talk about shipping Corals wrapped in newspapper being the best way to ship I have decided to try this experiment as well and see how it goes I just sold a couple things in selling forum one to Calinfornia the other in Arizona I live in Michigan so it will take a few days. I want to see how the corals do I will start of with easy stuff maybe a ric some zoo's ect. but from now on when ever I ship something to a reefer I am going to try to include something. I have asked they let me know hopefully they get some free bonus corals and hopefully they will report here when they get it.. I will ship it today and guess they well not get it till middle of next week. I would like to encourage others to try this just to see what happens. Eric theory is that the paper absorbs the corals waste and toxins keeping it away from the corals. the most difficult thing is keeping the coral from drying out I am thinking of a sandwich bag for this. just to see what happens I am actually not venturing to much on success on this one since I heard breather bags were a good idea and I don't have any right now.. speaking of that anybody know a good location to get them..

 

[mbbuna]

i hope you are shipping them priority overnite? it sounds like you are sending them 2nd or 3rd day, if so i dont think your going to have much luck no matter what method you use

 

[wayne in norway]

I can't believe breather bags are a good idea since they are going to let water vapor out? Surely a straight plastic bag.

Why don't you experiment. Get some frags, wrap them, put them in a box and leave it alone for 3 days and see wht you think yourself.


Having seen reefs exposed for multiple hours at low tide Erics article makes perfect sense to me.

 

[Labman48076]

breather bags

breather bags

the idea of this is that it slowly allows the gasses to escape while keeping most of the mosture in I was not able to get any for this test other wise I would have done both I picked out a acro frag and a couple nice zoos for the test nothing fancy but corals they should like. I wraped them 1st in Algae soaked in water in my case red my fish don't seem to like Nori. and soaked some newspaper in tank water and out them in a bag. from there we will see what happens DHL the service I am using says 2 days posibly 1 day I paid for ground service from michigan to Arizona and California so either one is good time wise. I have found DHL has a policy about not letting stuff sit on the dock be it express items or ground of course express does have a priority, I shipped it about 10am see how long before it get to them and how the corals do I am giving both a link to this thread.

 

[arconom]

But you don't use newspaper. You are supposed to use unbleached paper towels.

Shipping method: If submerged, consider wrapping the specimen in two layers of unbleached or unperfumed, undyed paper towels to keep the rough skeleton from abrading through the plastic bag. Or try it both ways. If shipping damp, make sure that the damp wrapped specimen is in a bag or sealed container. If you don't, the humidity will not stay near 100%, and it doesn't tke much evaporation for a paper towel to saturated with 35psu water to rise quickly. If this happens, then any mortality cannot be ascertained as to whether it was the dampness or the hypersalinity that was at fault. With either method, see shipping box above.

 

[Kurt03]

keep us posted on how it works out, very interesting.

 

[toddmcgill]

the idea behind "dry" shipping is to keep the coral from sitting in a puddle of ammonia for a couple of days and smothering itself with protective mucous,from my own experiences i would say most corals dont respond well to dry shipping if for more than 24 hours transit, however , zooanthids , and mushrooms generally do okay,i have imported hundreds of pounds of orange and green zooanthid rock from fiji that was wrapped in a couple layers of plastic bags with no paper, and it does fine, the biggest problem is not from the zoo's but from sponge and such dieing off, which then causes an ammonia nitrite spike in the system they are put into on arrival if it isnt of a sufficent volume,this is what causes most dieoff,i have had a lot of this rock come in with various hitchhiker corals attached such as lobo's, organ pipe,favia ,mysedium,oxypora, etc, and generally the lps have some tissue damage from dry shipping,but the non damaged areas recover fine and eventually the specimen regrows to it's former beauty.

in my opinion the only real advantage to this methos is shipping cost and that can be significant when shipping 100lbs of zooanthid colony,from fiji,saving my hundreds if not over 1000 dollars,but for frags and such i suspect the health of the corals would be better if they were shipped overnight in water and pure oxygen,however for those not willing to take that expense certain corals can and will survive 3 to 4 days of dam shipping.but expect them to look puckered up for a week or so.

good luck, and if you are selling zoo and shroom frags and are finding the shipping cost to me a major deal breaker for sales that might be the answer,just be prepared to explain it ahead of time to customers , and dont be suprised if not every polyp survives.

 

[Labman48076]

UPdate

UPdate

Well as predected the corals didn't make to clarify I was not selling the corals I just though in a couple small frags with some Items I sold in the forsale section just to see how it would do not such a great idea but intresting. I have been talking to Eric Borneman about this and it is next on his reaserch prodjects taking a back seat to the finish of the much waited Salt study and the Elegance coral reserch they found a very inexpensive temp probe I am planing to order that can check the temp every 2 seconds to every two hours has built in memorey to do 8000 temp checks. I will be doing some checking with it on my own and will help Eric collect Data as needed I think it's very intresting reaserch to find better safer ways to ship coral..

link to the probe less then 60 for the whole thing if one gets one get the 9 dollar holder makes it waterprooff acording to the company

http://www.microdaq.com/logtag/trix-8.php

and Eric's forum

http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic40290-9-1.aspx

 

[toddmcgill]

hey labman , next time try bagging them in a wet plastic bag wrapped around theminside another bag, this keeps them wet without clinging to them and smothering them like paper towelles or newspaper,shreddedn plastic like easter grass works also but is rather a pain to remove from some pieces.the trick is keeping them damp but letting them breathe, paper towells and newspaper get a layer of mucous on them and then smother the coral,plastic works much better.

 

[Serioussnaps]

i dont like the idea of them being out of water for that long

 

[TacoKing]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7892270#post7892270 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Serioussnaps
i dont like the idea of them being out of water for that long

Quality post there. Really helped the discussion.......

Anyways back on topic. I've used this method to ship some SPS before and have had decent results. Like toddmcgill said, importing large amounts of corals from indo using this method can save a ton of money. Water weight is expensive and there is not that much room on the trans-pacific flights.

 

[xDave]

I worked for a large distributor for many years, this how it comes in, and how we sent it out. ( we used unprinted newsprint paper0 It would take up to 7 days for it to get to us. It's in a sealed container so the water doesn't evaporate. Even if who you got it from didnt ship it to you that way, the place he got it from shipped it to him that way.
Here is the main difference between you trying to do it this way and a shipper doing it
The coral should be sealed in bags with pure O2

 

[Labman48076]

the update on this

the update on this

I plan to order in the near future a temp recorder that Borneman and others found this can go into the box even the bag and do a temp check at a preset time from 2 sec to 2 hours then I will run some of my own test etc ok really play around with it even ship the probe no corals included maybe base rock to simulate the coral.

http://www.microdaq.com/logtag/trix-8.php

 

[Avast Marine]

I would suggest to PM Organisim and see if he would chime in on your discussion here. He might be able to give you some pretty good advice on this topic.

 

[xtrm suv]

i had a seller ship this way a few months back and it wasn't good... they were sealed in bags with the wet paper and they didn't make it... good luck

 

[Chrismo]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8021037#post8021037 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by xDave
I worked for a large distributor for many years, this how it comes in, and how we sent it out. ( we used unprinted newsprint paper0 It would take up to 7 days for it to get to us. It's in a sealed container so the water doesn't evaporate. Even if who you got it from didnt ship it to you that way, the place he got it from shipped it to him that way.
Here is the main difference between you trying to do it this way and a shipper doing it
The coral should be sealed in bags with pure O2

Pure O2 is highly flamable, I doubt it would be allowed on a plane. Pure O2 might be harder to convince exporters to try too. I look foreward to seeing more data on this. I shipped some Xenia on damp newspapers a whie ago. They survived.

Chris

 

[Labman48076]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8079057#post8079057 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Chrismo
Pure O2 is highly flamable, I doubt it would be allowed on a plane. Pure O2 might be harder to convince exporters to try too. I look foreward to seeing more data on this. I shipped some Xenia on damp newspapers a whie ago. They survived.

Chris

how far did you ship them, how many days and what was the outside temp local and to where they arrived..

 

[JHemdal]

Labman,

Disregard the post "O2 is highly flamable..." Digging back to seventh grade science, I seem to recall that oxygen just supports combustion. There still needs to be a fuel and ignition source. Umm, besides - every fish is shipped with "pure O2" in the bag above the water....so it evidently is not much of a problem, or planes would be dropping out of the sky every day<grin>.

Toddmgill's method of using wet plastic bag strips to surround the coral and then place that inside a bag with oxygen is how the Waikiki Aquarium used to ship their corals (and for all I know, they still do it that way). Still, they would aim for transit times less than 20 hours.

Jay Hemdal

 

[SoS125]

If you just shipping a few small frags. The extra 6 or 7 ounces of water is only gonna cost a buck or two. Better safe than sorry. On large orders it might save a bundle though.

 

[AUS]

Most of the collectors ship overnight in Australia with wet newspaper with very good results, including SPS. SPS in water arrive as colored soup bags generally. No O2 is used from what I've ever seen.




Andy