Coral Shipping via newspaper

[DarkXerox]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8130419#post8130419 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by 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

I actually talked to Charles Delbeek about this last december when I was in Honolulu. They still use the wet plastic strips to the best of my knowledge. I think there is some issue with full-size colonies. However, I believe that to be safe, it should just be an acropora genus, since others may not be able to withstand being outside of the water for a prolonged period of time.

As far as the oxygen quote, I highly doubt that anyone has pure oxygen at LFS and rather just have a high ratio mix of O2 to nitrogen. Remember the first Apollo capsule test? They had pure oxygen in there and had one of the most horrible fires ever during the test. Our atmosphere only has about 21% O2, over 70% N2, and the rest is Argon plus other trace gasses.

 

[JHemdal]

Dark Xerox, et-al,

I never received any corals other than SPS from Waikiki, so cannot comment if the method would work on LPS or not. It is obviously fine for most soft corals.

Every wholesaler I've ever worked for, or bought fish from has used pure oxygen to ship fish. By pure, I mean 99% or so, welding mix. I use 100% medical oxygen to ship fish all the time. Most larger LFS use oxygen for their out of state customers. The issue in the Apollo tragedy was just as I said, that the oxygen supported combustion of a fuel after an ignition source was supplied. Unless we are giving our fish Bic lighters, this simply isn't a problem. Oxygen is not a flammable gas! 30 years back when I was a punk kid working in a fish wholesale shop, we used to place our lit cigerettes on the nozzle for the oxygen cylinder and press the lever...off would go a tiny flaming meteor, hopefully to hit one of our co-workers in the head. No explosions, never caught anything on fire, just a slightly brighter lit end to the cigerette for a moment or two.

So lets put the O2 issue to rest, but do you want to hear something worse? Fish boxes leak water all the time. What do you think happens when one leaks while in the cargo hold of an airliner? Perhaps nothing at first, but let the saltwater corrode a few wires, and then I have to wonder! There has been one instance of marine fish shipping water (in this case sharks) slopping out into the cargo hold and blowing out the electronics on a jet, causing it to be grounded for expensive repairs.


Jay Hemdal