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A Comprehensive
Review of Aquatic Livestock Packaging & Shipping
By Kenneth Combs
This guide will
attempt to provide an in depth review on preparing & packaging
aquatic livestock for transportation. It is organized into three
sections: Preparation, Packaging & Shipping. Each section has a
process orientated checklist and a discussion section. The scope of
this guide is limited to aquaria related material and “hobbyist to
hobbyist” transfer of aquatic livestock, with special emphasis on
the particulars unique to shipping the killifishes.
Part I:
Preparation:
Discussion:
Clearly all the considerations in the checklist to the right should
be common sense, but who amongst us has not received a sub par
specimen from abroad? Not to mention chances are as we begin to ship
enough fish, there is a good chance we might end up being equally
guilty of shipping a D.O.A. 
Purging livestock to reduce metabolic ammonia
A widely accepted
standard is that fish will remain reasonably healthy for
extended periods without food. We use
this bit of information, as part of our routine shipping
preparation; we purge our fish of all waste before transit. Hence,
the widely advocated maxim: “72hr fast” is the standard practice in
support of reducing metabolically produced waste levels with
livestock is in transit.
However, we also
reason that the percentages of fatty stores, metabolic rates, and
general stress tolerances, vary amongst the species. It is less
speculative that there is a rough correlation between size,
reproductive effort and lifespan: in plain English: smaller fishes
with a shorter lifespan are more likely to devote a disproportional
emphasis on reproduction than on other survival strategies such as
storing fat to get through lean times. Amongst the aquarium fishes:
annual killifish in the genus Nothobrachius
in particular, would likely provide a example for that adage.
Purging induced
Stresses
Consequently, a
condition has recently been coined “irritable
gut syndrome” (an affliction akin in diagnosis to “wasting
disease”), and it seems prone to manifest itself in the
smaller killifish species. Speculation has it that the causes of
this affliction is likely related to an amalgamation of shipping
related factors which allow otherwise normal or benign digestive
bacterial fauna to propagate and/or migrate beyond normal digestive
tolerances. Alternatively, the standard practice of starving fish
for 3 days prior to shipping, along with the expected shipping
induced stresses, might compromise the fishes immune system,
allowing normally rested parasites or pathogens to attack. Once this
problem is evident, the prognosis can be poor if not treated
promptly. The Nothobrachius in
particular appear prone to acquire this affliction when excessive
fasting is practiced prior to shipping. For more information see
chatter in various message threads per “Killietalk”
Archives, most notably this month:
http://fins.actwin.com/killietalk/month.200208/threads.html#00174
*due credit to Dr. Charles H. Harrison for his thoughts, post and
personal assistance in this regard.
Continued:
Part II:
Preparing the Livestock
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