Warm weather shipping tips

Subscribed because I'd like to know as well.

Listening in on this one.

Well, I shipped a box to south Florida last week. The corals were double bagged and placed in a styrofoam insulated box about 18x20x20 (lots of corals). I wrapped an ice pack in 2 paper towels, placed it in the bottom of the styrofoam box and covered the bottom with packing peanuts. I put all the bagged corals in and then topped it of with more packing peanuts. I dropped the box off at 1 pm and it arrived at the destination about 1 pm the next day. The temperature was around 90 when the box was dropped off, and at the destination when it was delivered. All the corals arrived in perfect health.

This is all I know to do with shipping in warm weather. I'm still looking for any tips from people with more experience.

Pete don't know if you have read this article. Sorry typing with my pad and having problem iserting link.

Let me throw out a product that might help reduce package size and weight. ​Aerogel

Thanks for the article. I haven't read it before now.

One thing I just thought of. I do not leave any air in the bags with the corals. The reason I do this is to ensure the coral will not be exposed to air for long periods of time. Also its my understanding that any ammonia that accumulated in the bags will not become as toxic until its exposed to air. That very well could be a myth, and I encourage others to either confirm or disprove anything I have posted.

It depends on the ammonium concentration as well as the temp of the solution, amount of surface area for gas/solution ion exchange as well as what volume of water your looking at. Obviously greater volume = better or lower concentration of ammonia. One last thing most reefers don't take into account when looking at the cycle of a fish tank is the pH level as well as the dKH or "hardness" or "alkalinity" basically the carbonate concentration which plays a large role in leaving room for free ammonia (NH3) commonly in our fishtanks as NH3OH or the ionized form (NH4+) ammonium.

The pH will give a good indication of how much (ksp value) of free ammonia is available in solution and how much is ionized as NH4+. The free kind is the kind that kills fish. Without getting too deep in ksp or the solubility of a ion in a specific volume of water there are easy ways to combat this all together. But just to be a science guy here is a chart to show total ammonia vs ionized.

% Percent of ammonia from 'total ammonia'
Temp C/F pH 6.5 pH 7.0 pH 7.5 pH 7.7 pH 8.0 pH 8.5
20C (68F) 0.125 0.395 1.239 1.95 3.81 11.15
25C (77F) 0.179 0.565 1.766 2.77 5.380 15.242
28C (82F) 0.221 0.696 2.170 3.396 6.55 18.156
30C (86F) 0.253 0.798 2.482 3.78 7.450 20.292

So you can see the dramatic difference in changing pH very toxicity levels of ammonia in the tank....how this relates to shipping, WHELP lets go there..



Lets say you have a volume of 100ml or .1 Liters of tank water. It sits at a temperature of 77 F in your fish tank. Depending on your starting pH and what temperature on average its shipped at the ammonia levels can change given a small volume of solution for the free ammonia to be in at first glace. Now here comes to kicker, im sure this has been talked about in some thread somewhere but ill go into it.

As the coral is shipped in its now air tight bag, assuming we have a good normal temp not falling below 72F and above 80F the coral should remain healthy, but naturally the bag will increase in free ammonia concentration over time. However the carbon dioxide build up, if the bag has room for a volume of air, will force the pH down (more acidic) meaning it will bind free ammonia and keep the coral relatively happy until.........you guessed it you open the bag.

Once you open the bag the aeration that occurs allows for the immediate release of the carbon dioxide from not only the volume of air above the coral (now the entire volume of your house / shop once opened) but it allows for a significant amount of gas to escape from solution, increasing the pH exponentially. This is what allows now for the free ammonia to be released into solution and potentially hurt frags of coral because the pH change (remember folks back from chem in high school 1 pH = 10x difference in H+ concentration ) which even at a level of .5 +/- pH is DRASTIC in my opinion especially to sps corals.

Now for my personal opinion, not based on any experimentation, or trial and error sessions

Get a vial or bottle of some sort that will not leech any harmful things into the water over the course of its hopefully 24 Hr or so trip put the coral fra and the bottle in the water and fill the bottle with the frag in it, then screw the cap on under water, this allows for no gas exchange in the vial itself. Unless undergoing some serious pressure changes it should stay gas free until arriving at the address provided. Take the vial out of the box, place it in your sump to acclimate to temp, then get a container full of fresh tank water and open the vial underwater. This should prevent any sort of drastic ammonia or pH change all together. Again this isn't tested, i'm just throwing it out there. I actually plan to send a few of them this way to you pete

Thank you so much for the detailed explanation. I'm glad you chimed in having the chemistry background you have. I have thought about the rising co² and falling ph while shipping, but that's something that really cannot be controlled. I now understand the process that takes place with the ammonia becoming toxic when exposed to air.

I'll be making a bunch of bag balls for you in the morning

O and some will argue that there is no O2 provided during shipping that cant be healthy......well i hate to burst that bubble (see that i did there), but the amount of O2 exchanged from solution to gas is negligible in my opinion in that small of volume for that short period of time. It only allows a space for the build up of carbon dioxide, which can potentially hurt corals due to a pH swing. (as CO2 builds in the gas interface is will eventually be concentrated enough to move into the solution layer and vice versa depending on what your shipping coral / fish)

Last thing that can be done but i seriously do not recommend, mainly due to no experience with it, is preparing a solution of tank water treated with prime, when treating with prime (not knowing its specific ingredients because they dont tell us!) it does bring down total ammonia levels in tank water but only for a brief period of time. Im not sure how this affects coral, or how the concentration of bound ammonia will be affected by temperature. Again because i don't know what prime is made of so i can't guarantee this but i would assume its relatively safe given a large enough volume of water. I know some wholesale fish distributors use a similar approach when shipping large shipments to local stores.

Hopefully some more experienced shippers will chime in with some actual methods they have seen success with because my posts are purely explanation and no methodology thats proven through any sort of experience.

I have actually considered adding prime to the bags I ship out, or to the water during acclimation. As you said, you can't really say what happens because of the top secret ingredients.

Learning alot, great thread.

seamus2050 said:

Learning alot, great thread.

Click to expand...

That was a very interesting read you contributed. I would most definitely like to see more research with it.

Hot summertime shipping is the most challenging. You need to deal with both the cool to cold evening/nightime/and airplane temps and then the hot morning temps wherever the frag lands. Trying to arrange for a.m. delivery is critical. Simple but important guidelines which I apologize if they are too basic for some is that the box needs to extremely well insulated and preferably well sealed or as close to airtight as you can get. Your coral will not tolerate extremes in temperatures but often times it is the cold of the nighttime and airplane that is the most extreme assuming you are using a.m. delivery schedule. Bottomline, middle of summer and winter are tough times to ship. I have seen and tried shipping frags with and without air in the bag, not convinced either makes huge difference. Again a simple but true statement, healthy frags ship the best, regardless. Apologize if my comments are too simple.

Great point, it all starts with a healthy coral!

i think watchguy123 said it best, in all honestly the way you shipped your last coral pete was basic but effective, as long as your not a numskull and your frags are healed up, and your not shipping overseas, basic healed frags in bags and insulation works perfect

Areogel, i cant believe i haven't come across this before, thanks seamus, according to the website this stuff is awesome for what we are talking about here High Temperature Insulation ? Pyrogel XT-E for Hot Work

I am going to lay out my first experiment to Pete. I plan to ship Fedex end of second business day service. package will be a 7x7x7 box insulated with 1" foil back foam. Corals will be wet wrapped in paper and sealed in individual bags. bags will then be submerged in a larger bag filled with water and sealed. The bag will be placed in box and surrounded by blown paper insulation. R-Value of insulation should be 10+. I figure that the mass of the water will help hold temp. when the bag sweats the paper will obsorb the water and hopfully help cool the bag. I have an industrial vaccuum/heat sealer. all bags will be heat sealed, will try one coral under vac, may be a death sentance.