melev

Yesterday, Fedex showed up with four big boxes from LiveAquaria. I couldn't believe my eyes.





I mean, this can't be all my order. When I'd placed my order, there was some discussion of quantity, and I replied with "Surprise me." I'm not picky - I love my fishies and I wasn't sure what they had in stock ready to ship. So I start pulling out these giant bags of water to see what arrived. Each bag had a single fish in it.



Initially I floated the bags in my sump to keep their temperature, although they were packed so well, they felt right to the touch. Each box contained a styrofoam cooler. The bagged item was immersed in packing peanuts to protect from shipping mishandling, and there were two envelopes filled with heat packs on top, under each lid. The lids were taped down to the ice chests to maintain the temperature during transit.



As I sliced through the layers of plastic bags to get to the fish inside, I realized it was way more than one might expect. I've received double and triple bagged livestock before, but these were bagged NINE times. I counted twice to make sure I was right, and checked a few other bagged items. Diver's Den doesn't mess around.

The instructions in the box recommended drip acclimation, so I proceeded to do as suggested. Note that the cooler was placed on the lid to prevent the concrete floor from dropping the water temperature too quickly.



I just used what I had handy. This was a large coil of 1/4" thickwall tubing.



This small inline ball valve allowed me to control the drip rate.



The water in the cooler (below) was what came out of all the bags. I think I received more than 10g of water in this shipment.




So by now, you're probably wondering what I got. When I visited Live Aquaria two months ago, I wanted to get some mangroves, a curly-cue coral (listed as wire coral Cirrhipathes anguina), and some fish. Now that I'm back home for a few weeks in a row, this order was finally placed & filled.



Here are two of the six Purple Firefish. They immediately took to the protective cover of the mangrove roots.



Why was this order so well packed? I've seen orders of fish come to fish stores with 30 fish in a box of 24 bags, and here I'd received one dartfish in a big bag of water in a temperature controlled cooler. With so many boxes, I called Kevin at LiveAquaria to find out why. What he told me is that the day my order shipped, it was 0 degrees outside. LiveAquaria/Diver's Den won't take chances with livestock; they want the order to arrive with healthy happy fish & corals. Why were they bagged so many times? Well, it turns out that if the staff hears that a friend of Kevin's has placed an order, they get a little overzealous in the packing department.

Getting fish from Diver's Den is always best, because the fish have been quarantined, observed for at least four weeks, and trained to eat prepared foods. Diver's Den livestock thus has a better success rate, which many hobbyists appreciate. Their facilities are clean, and their staff stays busy making sure every animal is well tended to. In an upcoming article, I'll share what I saw and learned during my afternoon there.

Here's the link to their site: http://www.liveaquaria.com/diversden/

All of my fish were put in QT for the time being, and the mangroves were added to the refugium zone. I have an idea that will take a little effort, but could be kind of neat. The curly-cue coral was put in the suncoral/frag tank. The new angels are in my reef in a social acclimation box I built tonight. I'll share images of that in tomorrow's blog.