Biota Yellow Tang death

[Sleepingtiger]

I deal a lot with buying fish online, mainly African cichlids. Every dealer importer I worked with ships fish counter to counter. Meaning, the importer brings the box of fish to the airport, checks it in... it gets on the next flight to my airport and I pickup directly at the airport. Its cost about $65 to ship, but depending on flight time, the fish are normally in and out of the bag in <12hrs.
Being that marine fish more delicate than African cichlids, why aren't dealers going this route?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I deal a lot with buying fish online, mainly African cichlids. Every dealer importer I worked with ships fish counter to counter. Meaning, the importer brings the box of fish to the airport, checks it in... it gets on the next flight to my airport and I pickup directly at the airport. Its cost about $65 to ship, but depending on flight time, the fish are normally in and out of the bag in <12hrs.
Being that marine fish more delicate than African cichlids, why aren't dealers going this route?

Air cargo is definitely the way to go! Sometimes a third the price of overnight, and unless the cargo gets bumped, I’ve never had a missed direct flight. Connecting flights can be a problem though.
Jay

 

[Tamberav]

That is correct: as long as the salinity is the same, drip acclimating shipped fish causes the CO2 to degas, raising the pH, and making the ammonia convert to its toxic form. I've seen fish die right in the bag from this. If the salinity is different, the trick is to make up some seawater at the same salinity, pH and temperature as the water in the bag, then move the fish right over, and drip acclimate from there. You can use an acid to lower the pH.

Jay

This is exactly how I do it. If the salinity matches then they just go in. If it doesn’t… I already have fresh salt mix and rodi on hand. I just add more rodi until matching and then they go into that new water

I never ever drip a shipped fish from the bag water.

 

[NanoSteam]

Just like that, replacement was DOA thanks to UPS. I tried, saw it arrived at local sorting facility at 6pm yesterday. I gambled and drove out to find out pickup hours are just 10am to 2pm. How useless is that.

 

[Sleepingtiger]

Will you work with UPS on getting a refund?

 

[NanoSteam]

Will you work with UPS on getting a refund?

Apparently in this case the shipper (Biota) is the one that has to file a claim if they purchased insurance. The only guarantee is the shipping fee gets reimbursed back to Biota since it was late shipment.

 

[Chrisv.]

Ugh. That sucks. Sorry.

 

[Wyvern]

Well correction, just got off the phone with UPS and it hasn’t even left KY yet and according to them won’t reach my hub until tomorrow morning.

horrible first experience for me ordering fish online for the first time not at Biotas fault at all but not sure I’m going to do this again. I’m now in the hole for the YT plus additional $35 shipping I paid for the replacement that will probably be DOA.

Well FedEx THREW the box containing a beautiful possum wrasse, killing it.

Then they did the same for my corals, splitting a bag open.

UPS only broke my sump in front of me after being a week late.

 

[NanoSteam]

Well FedEx THREW the box containing a beautiful possum wrasse, killing it.

Then they did the same for my corals, splitting a bag open.

UPS only broke my sump in front of me after being a week late.

Honestly, I've had better luck with USPS than either Fedex or UPS... now that's sad.

 

[Maxcmo]

****, sucks.

 

[NanoSteam]

No word from Biota today, hopefully something tomorrow. No more online fish orders for me. I'm sure most have great success with it but so far on my first attempt I'm down $185 and 2 dead YT's. I feel worse for the animals themselves. From what I can tell, the replacement tang spent time from 5pm until 9am in my local hub. From 5pm to 8pm it was at least 90F outside. I could only assume it cooked sitting in that hot warehouse environment, not to mention the bag was deflated when it arrived plus had a leak.

 

[Spieg]

Just like that, replacement was DOA thanks to UPS. I tried, saw it arrived at local sorting facility at 6pm yesterday. I gambled and drove out to find out pickup hours are just 10am to 2pm. How useless is that.

Sorry to hear that... UPS just plain sux.

 

[bnord]

I have acquired 3 tangs over time, one a year ago and it grew like a weed, but unfortunately it succumbed to Lateral line disease, first and only time I have seen it. the second two were tiny and and both were flourishing when one turned up dead one afternoon after appearing fine and eating that morning. Opened it and it had a pellet in its stomach that seemed hard and likely the cause of death.
Have bought 2 coral beauties and they are thriving
1 scrawled rabbit fish which is growing too fast but none of it from grazing (grimace)
great to keep financing they CB business, it will get healthier, stronger more diverse as the months/years go on

 

[Sleepingtiger]

No word from Biota today, hopefully something tomorrow. No more online fish orders for me. I'm sure most have great success with it but so far on my first attempt I'm down $185 and 2 dead YT's. I feel worse for the animals themselves. From what I can tell, the replacement tang spent time from 5pm until 9am in my local hub. From 5pm to 8pm it was at least 90F outside. I could only assume it cooked sitting in that hot warehouse environment, not to mention the bag was deflated when it arrived plus had a leak.

I think most of us who order fish has had a good experience. I can’t tell you it will not happen again, but I can tell you that this was just bad luck. 95% my packages are on time. 95% the fish come in healthy. You just so happen to get unlucky twice. I wouldn’t be discouraged at what happened. This hobby has its ups and downs. I am sure when you get that one tang and it stays with you for the next 10yrs, the first two losses means little.

 

[NanoSteam]

I have acquired 3 tangs over time, one a year ago and it grew like a weed, but unfortunately it succumbed to Lateral line disease, first and only time I have seen it. the second two were tiny and and both were flourishing when one turned up dead one afternoon after appearing fine and eating that morning. Opened it and it had a pellet in its stomach that seemed hard and likely the cause of death.
Have bought 2 coral beauties and they are thriving
1 scrawled rabbit fish which is growing too fast but none of it from grazing (grimace)
great to keep financing they CB business, it will get healthier, stronger more diverse as the months/years go on

I feel CB yellow tangs are not quite as stout as they need to be yet and obviously we're not at the volume needed to support the industry. It's all so new to us. I'm glad you're having some success with it, and I would really like to just buy CB exclusively to support them and the research needed to improve.

I think most of us who order fish has had a good experience. I can’t tell you it will not happen again, but I can tell you that this was just bad luck. 95% my packages are on time. 95% the fish come in healthy. You just so happen to get unlucky twice. I wouldn’t be discouraged at what happened. This hobby has its ups and downs. I am sure when you get that one tang and it stays with you for the next 10yrs, the first two losses means little.

Yeah I'm sure it was a case of bad luck for me, but it's hard for me to look past it. Biota hasn't responded to me yet and I'm unsure on what the next step is at this point. I wouldn't want a replacement either, I would be happy with store credit to allow temps to come down here in the area safer for fish and go from there.

 

[BaghdadBean]

What a heartbreaking thread. UPS in my area is a absolute nightmare, I would definitely opt for air cargo if at all possible with any shipment. I do a lot of online vending myself (in wool and meat, not fish) and shipping has just gone straight down the chute in the last three years here. We went through the program to ship Delta cargo for our meat orders and it has been a far more positive experience.

Hopefully Biota will offer air cargo shipments in the future, if they don’t already.

 

[NanoSteam]

What a heartbreaking thread. UPS in my area is a absolute nightmare, I would definitely opt for air cargo if at all possible with any shipment. I do a lot of online vending myself (in wool and meat, not fish) and shipping has just gone straight down the chute in the last three years here. We went through the program to ship Delta cargo for our meat orders and it has been a far more positive experience.

Hopefully Biota will offer air cargo shipments in the future, if they don’t already.

UPS seems to be a nightmare in most areas and it isn't even a Covid thing, it has always been this way in my experience.

Cargo does seem to be the way to go speaking to a few folks but I wonder if they don't do it due to lack of volume. I'm sure it's much easier and convenient for these vendors to just wait for UPS to stop by their warehouse and pickup their shipments for them. No time wasted on their part.

Unless they start losing crazy amounts of money from DOA's I don't see them switching over any time soon unfortunately.

 

[brucelee90]

I'm also planning to get one from them this week. Sorry for your loss.

Did Biota respond to your replacement incident? The fish looks really tiny...

 

[NanoSteam]

I'm also planning to get one from them this week. Sorry for your loss.

Did Biota respond to your replacement incident? The fish looks really tiny...

They responded late Friday asking if I wanted to pay $35 again to get another replacement but I asked for store credit and haven't heard back. I don't want to keep paying $35 for replacements especially since UPS is refunding them their shipping. That seems a bit unfair.

 

[Theulli]

This is exactly how I do it. If the salinity matches then they just go in. If it doesn’t… I already have fresh salt mix and rodi on hand. I just add more rodi until matching and then they go into that new water

I never ever drip a shipped fish from the bag water.

Agreed and I have had great success with this, and horrible experiences trying to drip acclimate shipped fish. It's interesting though, if you have ever ordered from Blue Zoo they ship with instructions to not float the bag, and instead open it immediately and drip acclimate and they provide StressGuard to dump into the bucket with the bag water. I assume they are concerned about oxygen issues due to shipping delays.

Anyway, I thought that was a good customer experience, though I still didn't try it their way since I'm a curmudgeon



Lastly thing - don't assume you know the salinity of the water your fish is coming in if you do it this way. I had a quarantine tank all set up for a Biota tang some time back, thinking it was coming in 1.018. It came in 1.025. Thankfully I had somewhere else to put him. I am shocked at how hard it is to find information on each vendor's site concerning what they ship their fish in.