Dr Reef Quarantined Fish

[Reeftanktraveler]

Its really not where you live that matters.

1st thing Fish travels at night. I get email after email saying weather tomorrow at my location is 80F (or warm) so should'nt be a problem. Well they forget fish travels at night. when temp are at the lowest.

We pack our fish in the morning and by evening they are picked up by UPS around 6-7PM central.
temps are starting to drop as suns coming down.

They sit at Tulsa airport in a metal case/trolly made to transport cargo into the belly of the plane from roughly from 8pm to 10pm. UPS flies out of Tulsa at 1030pm daily. (only 1 overnight flight out of Tulsa). If there is something wrong wuth the plane they sit addition 24 hrs before flying out.

They fly to Louisville Kentucky. Arriving at 1130 to midnight. They get unloaded and travel on a chain on conveyor belts from 12am to 5-6am getting sorted through open warhouse. That sorting facility has a thousand garage doors open in front and back with trucks constantly driving in from front and out the back.

This is the critical part of the shipping from 9pm onwards boxes has been subjected to nothin but cold temps.
In midwest nights are ranging about 0-30F on the coldest and about 20-40F currently.
Boxes are subjected to these low temps for 8-9 hours.

They fly out to respective states and are normally at their hubs by 7am and then loaded on to truck to delivery by 10-11am.

So even if you live in the hottest part of USA, temp at that point does not matter as the damage was done in the previous 8-9 hours they were sitting in cages or on convayer belts getting sorted.

I have dont many studies on these boxes and temp inside the box will remain between 72F to 84F for over 30 hrs if they are left outside on a normal day that has a low of 60F and high on 90F.

In the winter same box will only remain in good range for 6 hrs without any heat pack. 1 single heat pack will increase the temp inside the box by about 20 degree compared to ambient temp. If temp is constantly between 30-40F throught the night, single heat pack by the time you recieve the fish will register temps of 60-65F inside the box.

Double heat pack will register about 72-76F for the same box.
Cant put 3 because at some point heat packs will glow so hot (they glow at 120F at max within 2-3 hrs of activation)
that they will produce more than 90F in the box will will likely kill the fish.
Thats what happens sometimes when fish arrives dead in a bag. either due to excessive heat or heat pack near the bag or too many heat packs.

I hope that helps.

This is a great description of what happens and why fish die in transit. Thank you for taking the time to give a detailed explanation.

 

[Dr. Reef]

You’re missing a fundamental part of doing business - none of this is the *customers* problem. That’s on you. I don’t like getting dead fish so I choose to order from other vendors. That’s the reality. I do wish you the best.

Customer been warned but they still want their fish. I dont ship when i ts too cold but customer email after email and say i want my fish. so you cant live this way or that way. and again i dont run a business i run a service with a passion.
You are missing where my heart it.

 

[Toob]

Customer been warned but they still want their fish. I dont ship when i ts too cold but customer email after email and say i want my fish. so you cant live this way or that way. and again i dont run a business i run a service with a passion.
You are missing where my heart it.

As I said - I just feel bad for the fish. I don’t like ordering dead fish over and over. I am sure it is not easy to ship fish and i’m sure “customers want their fish” but based on my experience, there are a lot of dead fish. And I don’t like dead fish and so I am no longer a customer.

‍

 

[Dr. Reef]

For folks that wanna know the technical stuff, (and to prove i wasnt just talking out of no where regarding temps) here are some experiments i did. I had to dig them out from few years ago when i did them. some are screen shots or pics taken by my phone camera so appologies for sub quality.

This pic shows temp inside one of our most common styrofoam box. This box is subjected to ambient temp of a cold night during travel. This is a normal cooler night with temp averaging about 40F.
From the time it was packed and sent at 7pm, temps dropped to deadly by 1030pm. These fish will not survive.

This nest pic shows same box subjected to freezing temps without heat packs. Avg temp at night would be below 20F. These fish never will have a chance to survive. temps dropped deadly within 2-4 hrs of packing.

This next pic is of same box with 1 heat pack on a normal cool day where ambient temps are about avg 50-60F. These fish will arrive well within range and likely will not have any doa.

Compare the same box with 2 heat packs on a freezing night with avg temp below 40 likely 25-35F. By the time you get the fish they will be almost on the lower end of good range.

This is why we dont use 3 or more heat packs, At about 2-3 hrs they will get so hot that they will fry the fish.

In my early days i tried thermal bags/liners to ship. This chart shpws they are just not as efficient as compared to styrofoam.

This chart shows same box in summer time. No cold pack vs 1 vs 2 cold packs. No cold pack and 1 cold pack will be sufficent to ship in these ambient temps of 80F plus. 2 cols packs will dip the temp too low to cause death in some sensitive fish.

This last chart shows the difference between Liner vs styro vs styro with no cold pack vs 2 cold packs and 3 cold packs.
In this I learned 3 will kill the fish with 2 cold packs almost dipping too low as well.


I have also done experiments with some say use 2 holes with a heat pack so O2 can flow and they can glow better etc, On a normal day it does make a difference of 2-5 degrees inside the box but on cold freezing nights it does not help and in some cases leaked heat out.

I hope this helps people that really wanna understand the science behinf shipping.
This is also for the ones that say Dr Reef does not know how to ship. Well evidence is right here. I did many experiments on how to ship and also trained with 4 major wholesalers in order to be good at it.

I have same equipment /bags / liners and boxes they use and same method they use. only difference in their shipping and mine which makes a huge difference is they ship cargo. I ship UPS.

Cargo works differently. Most of them ship southwest cargo. Wholsesaler packs the box and hand delivers it to southwest cargo, where it sits inside a climate control room till loaded on the commercial plane. Then it arrive directly to your airport within few hours of flight time and into my hands. Commercial planes have livestock special compartments where they are also climeate controlled.

Freight companies do not operate like that. boxes sit outside and planes and trucks are not climate controlled.

 

[Dr. Reef]

As I said - I just feel bad for the fish. I don’t like ordering dead fish over and over. I am sure it is not easy to ship fish and i’m sure “customers want their fish” but based on my experience, there are a lot of dead fish. And I don’t like dead fish and so I am no longer a customer.

‍

I dont see anywhere where i asked you to be my customer. I responded to your statement where you said weather might not matter at your end. Again you are missing the point and just focused on "i am no longer your customer"
I am not here to convince you but to educate others that wanna know the science behind shipping with your baseless comment of weather at your end.

 

[Tamberav]

I try not to order mid winter or summer from anyone. It’s not just money lost but you just killed an animal.

We all talk about how much patience is needed in this hobby to be successful. One can have patience with this too and skip Christmas and new years sales.. god knows most venders have non stop sales for every obscure holiday anyways all year long. It is like shopping at kohls. **** is always marked as some sort of sale or coupon.

 

[Dr. Reef]

I try not to order mid winter or summer from anyone. It’s not just money lost but you just killed an animal.

We all talk about how much patience is needed in this hobby to be successful. One can have patience with this too and skip Christmas and new years sales.. god knows most venders have non stop sales for every obscure holiday anyways all year long. It is like shopping at kohls. **** is always marked as some sort of sale or coupon.

I agree. This is why I dont ship dec (3 weeks in dec 2022 we didnt) 2 weeks in Jan and 10 days in Feb we didnt ship. In all Xmas sales i added a note: Take deliver 3-4 months down the road.

Lost life of a fish is sad enough also imagine my time and money and effort invoved in that fish for 30-45 days i have invested in it. Its very easy for folks to come to a website and say i got dead fish and got refunded or replaced. but for me its months worth of efforts wasted and sometime not by my hands but ups delays and weather that unexpectedly hits and delays shipments. This is really the reason why there are not more retailer that do qted fish because after all that effort you dont make any money.

If folks think I am making millions i can assure you there were years (not months) where i lost money out of pocket. 3 years to be exact and there were few months where i made barely few hundered dollars after all is said and done. so again I dont do this for money but just for personal passion I have towards the hobby.

 

[Dr. Reef]

I used to replace doa fish with no shipping cost to customers but then when fish dies, we got to acquire it all over againa nd qt it and start the process again. Its going to throw that replacement back by atleast 2 -3 months with the volume of orders we have, That doesnt help anyone. This is why we simply refund the money which no online retailer does (as far as i know) they all give you store credit because they want to hold on to you as a customer.

We dont do that why? because we dont care about running this business for money,
time and time again i have to say this, I am not into this for money but for passion.

If folks insist for replacement, we do replace but it takes time.

My goal is to have enough fish qted and ready to ship that when orders come in we should be able to fill and ship in a weeks time. We are getting there.
When we started it used to take 2-3 months and in some cases 3-5 months. Now we are shipping Jan/feb order so we are about 1 months or so behind.
I am adding more poeple/labor and equipment that fastens our work. We have automatic sealing and O2 intoducing machines, automatic box packing and taping machines and everyother technology wholesalers use so we can get efficient at it.
Yes there are loose ends and we come to know about them with forums like these and we fix whats not working. There is no roll model business i can go and learn from when it comes to qtying fish. I have to learn and grow with feedbacks like these.

 

[Genvid]

I have a very good experience with Dr. Reef, I ordered three times. I also waited for a while, but I understood that it was better for my fish. Of all the orders, only one chromis doa. For more than a year, all the fish are in order. I'm thinking of ordering more, but that's just my experience.

 

[Sink_or_Swim]

I have a very good experience with Dr. Reef, I ordered three times. I also waited for a while, but I understood that it was better for my fish. Of all the orders, only one chromis doa. For more than a year, all the fish are in order. I'm thinking of ordering more, but that's just my experience.

I have ordered a lot of my fish from Dr. Reef and I too have also always had a very good experience.

 

[trevorhiller]

Here is a recent thread that’s worth reading:

Fish order Dr reef quarantined fish

Ordered a neon blue goby and a hi fin goby in early January from dr reef. Just received it today. The neon goby was dead and the hi fin goby is half an inch and I’d be really surprised if he doesn’t instantly get decimated in the tank. I’ve heard good things so maybe I just had a bad experience...

www.reef2reef.com

My experience has been like many others - the customer service is good in that they honor DOAs, but dang - it’s too many dead fish for me. I stopped ordering.

It actually took me a while to use up my DOA credit because the fish just did not seem to survive long.

No issues with their customer service, but the “fish service” is terrible. I just feel bad ordering fish that I know have such a low chance of survival - I honestly don’t know how they stay in business.

Edit - I live in mild Northern California. This is not a weather issue (in my case anyway).

I ordered two fish from Dr. Reef. A watchman goby and tomini tang. The first Tomini tang lived about 10 days and suddenly died. The watchman goby was DOA.

Both were replaced even though the Tomini Tang was out of the 7 day guarantee window. The second Tomini tang came in looking stressed and died during a methylene blue dip. I tried my best sitting on the floor making sure temperatures were good, circulation was good, fresh water was added, etc. But it didn't survive. The watchman goby was fine though.

Again, Dr. Reef replaced the Tomini tang. 3rd time was the charm. He's doing great to this day.

It was a crappy experience for me (more so for the poor fish) but Dr. Reef was great with the customer service and nearly instant communication. He responded inside of 10 mins when I emailed for help asking for advice on the second Tomini Tang. I was newly back to the hobby and these were my first online fish orders and was seriously considering if this hobby was for me. I didn't want to kill animals.

But, I didn't pay a dime over the initial cost of the fish. He likely spent more in 3 overnight shipments than the total I paid for the whole order, not even counting the initial and replacement fish cost and personal time spent QTing.

Unfortunately fish die sometimes during shipment. Short of spending a ridiculous amount of money sending them using temperature controlled, priority pharmaceutical/medical grade shipping solutions, I don't know that we can avoid it.

Personally, I would rather wait for the fish to be thoroughly through and OUT OF QT for a week or two, back in regular water eating and building it's immune system prior to the shipment. So while we are impatient, let the vendor ship the fish when they feel they are ready to go.

I haven't compared other online vendors as I've bought my other fish locally and QT'ed myself, but nothing seemed unusual or half-a**ed about his shipping methods.

For folks that wanna know the technical stuff, (and to prove i wasnt just talking out of no where regarding temps) here are some experiments i did. I had to dig them out from few years ago when i did them. some are screen shots or pics taken by my phone camera so appologies for sub quality.

This pic shows temp inside one of our most common styrofoam box. This box is subjected to ambient temp of a cold night during travel. This is a normal cooler night with temp averaging about 40F.
From the time it was packed and sent at 7pm, temps dropped to deadly by 1030pm. These fish will not survive.

This nest pic shows same box subjected to freezing temps without heat packs. Avg temp at night would be below 20F. These fish never will have a chance to survive. temps dropped deadly within 2-4 hrs of packing.

This next pic is of same box with 1 heat pack on a normal cool day where ambient temps are about avg 50-60F. These fish will arrive well within range and likely will not have any doa.

Compare the same box with 2 heat packs on a freezing night with avg temp below 40 likely 25-35F. By the time you get the fish they will be almost on the lower end of good range.

This is why we dont use 3 or more heat packs, At about 2-3 hrs they will get so hot that they will fry the fish.

In my early days i tried thermal bags/liners to ship. This chart shpws they are just not as efficient as compared to styrofoam.

This chart shows same box in summer time. No cold pack vs 1 vs 2 cold packs. No cold pack and 1 cold pack will be sufficent to ship in these ambient temps of 80F plus. 2 cols packs will dip the temp too low to cause death in some sensitive fish.

This last chart shows the difference between Liner vs styro vs styro with no cold pack vs 2 cold packs and 3 cold packs.
In this I learned 3 will kill the fish with 2 cold packs almost dipping too low as well.


I have also done experiments with some say use 2 holes with a heat pack so O2 can flow and they can glow better etc, On a normal day it does make a difference of 2-5 degrees inside the box but on cold freezing nights it does not help and in some cases leaked heat out.

I hope this helps people that really wanna understand the science behinf shipping.
This is also for the ones that say Dr Reef does not know how to ship. Well evidence is right here. I did many experiments on how to ship and also trained with 4 major wholesalers in order to be good at it.

I have same equipment /bags / liners and boxes they use and same method they use. only difference in their shipping and mine which makes a huge difference is they ship cargo. I ship UPS.

Cargo works differently. Most of them ship southwest cargo. Wholsesaler packs the box and hand delivers it to southwest cargo, where it sits inside a climate control room till loaded on the commercial plane. Then it arrive directly to your airport within few hours of flight time and into my hands. Commercial planes have livestock special compartments where they are also climeate controlled.

Freight companies do not operate like that. boxes sit outside and planes and trucks are not climate controlled.

I love that. I actually contemplated doing the same experiments just because I wanted to know what fish and coral go through during shipping. I planned to get two of the cheap temp loggers from Amazon and ship some boxes around the country. I wanted to see the limits of temperatures safe to ship and compare different packaging. You already did it though! You should consider posting that data seperately somewhere for coral vendors to see as I think it would be really helpful since not all have the same passion to spend money on experiments like this. It could save a lot corals and fish and you already did the hard/expensive part.

 

[Toob]

I ordered two fish from Dr. Reef. A watchman goby and tomini tang. The first Tomini tang lived about 10 days and suddenly died. The watchman goby was DOA.

Both were replaced even though the Tomini Tang was out of the 7 day guarantee window. The second Tomini tang came in looking stressed and died during a methylene blue dip. I tried my best sitting on the floor making sure temperatures were good, circulation was good, fresh water was added, etc. But it didn't survive. The watchman goby was fine though.

Again, Dr. Reef replaced the Tomini tang. 3rd time was the charm. He's doing great to this day.

It was a crappy experience for me (more so for the poor fish) but Dr. Reef was great with the customer service and nearly instant communication. He responded inside of 10 mins when I emailed for help asking for advice on the second Tomini Tang. I was newly back to the hobby and these were my first online fish orders and was seriously considering if this hobby was for me. I didn't want to kill animals.

But, I didn't pay a dime over the initial cost of the fish. He likely spent more in 3 overnight shipments than the total I paid for the whole order, not even counting the initial and replacement fish cost and personal time spent QTing.

Unfortunately fish die sometimes during shipment. Short of spending a ridiculous amount of money sending them using temperature controlled, priority pharmaceutical/medical grade shipping solutions, I don't know that we can avoid it.

Personally, I would rather wait for the fish to be thoroughly through and OUT OF QT for a week or two, back in regular water eating and building it's immune system prior to the shipment. So while we are impatient, let the vendor ship the fish when they feel they are ready to go.

I haven't compared other online vendors as I've bought my other fish locally and QT'ed myself, but nothing seemed unusual or half-a**ed about his shipping methods.

I love that. I actually contemplated doing the same experiments just because I wanted to know what fish and coral go through during shipping. I planned to get two of the cheap temp loggers from Amazon and ship some boxes around the country. I wanted to see the limits of temperatures safe to ship and compare different packaging. You already did it though! You should consider posting that data seperately somewhere for coral vendors to see as I think it would be really helpful since not all have the same passion to spend money on experiments like this. It could save a lot corals and fish and you already did the hard/expensive part.

As I said - good customer service, but a whole lot of dead fish. Glad you got a Tomini after 3 tries but I don’t know if I’d consider that a success story.

I’ve moved on to other QT vendors with a much, much higher success rate. Fewer dead animals is a good thing.

 

[BeanAnimal]

False . Can be done in 10 days

what can be done in 10 days?

If I am paying for for quarantined fish, 10 days doesn’t cut it.

 

[JoJosReef]

I've appreciate the service @Dr. Reef provides! Once my new tank/merger is ready for new fish, I'll have an order out!

 

[BeanAnimal]

You’re missing a fundamental part of doing business - none of this is the *customers* problem. That’s on you. I don’t like getting dead fish so I choose to order from other vendors. That’s the reality. I do wish you the best.

He is not missing anything. He is transparently explaining to you how the process works. He (and anybody else who has a similar DOA policy) loses their butt every time a fish arrives DOA or dies within the covered period.

I ordered a fish from extremely highly rated vendor. It died within an hour of opening the box. Their DOA policy is store credit, I eat the shipping for the DOA and the pay for full shipping on the store credit. So $80 fish, $50 shipping x 2 = $180 fish if it arrives. If not then $80 store credit and $50 x3 shipping.. so on and so on. Vendor was kind, but has me kind of over a barrel.

Dr. Reef is reputable and honors his terms and ships me healthy fish to the best of his ability. I can’t ask for more.

Shipping fish is a dangerous. Very few people along the way care what is in the box, and more than a few will mishandle it on purpose.

 

[BeanAnimal]

As I said - good customer service, but a whole lot of dead fish. Glad you got a Tomini after 3 tries but I don’t know if I’d consider that a success story.

I’ve moved on to other QT vendors with a much, much higher success rate. Fewer dead animals is a good thing.

Two recemt orders from Dr. Reef and a 3rd large order showing up this week. All good.

One recent order from another well recommend vendor and fish died after opening box. It had no chance.

Again, mail ordering fish is risky and DOA is a regular occurrence no matter what precautions are taken. No vendor wants to Have this happen.

 

[Wildreefs]

what can be done in 10 days?

If I am paying for for quarantined fish, 10 days doesn’t cut it.

We can agree to disagree . Done right, 10 days properly, is better than 30 days just for the sake of its a longer time

 

[Dr. Reef]

We can agree to disagree . Done right, 10 days properly, is better than 30 days just for the sake of its a longer time

If a vendor was to advertise qted for 10-14 days vs 30 days, i can assure you people will buy from 30 day qt vendor than 10-14 days. The problem is not how long it takes to qt a fish, and i agree you can do a 10-14 days succesful qt but the blogs teach everyone to qt 30-45 days and thus its built in mindworks that anything less than that is bad qt.

 

[BeanAnimal]

We can agree to disagree . Done right, 10 days properly, is better than 30 days just for the sake of its a longer time

I never said longer is better. You made a blunt statement with no context (presumably to be snarky) and I responded accordingly.

How long should a fish be in QT?
Until treatment is finished and the fish is healthy and eating in observation. Be that 10 days or 20 days or whatever.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Cargo works differently. Most of them ship southwest cargo. Wholsesaler packs the box and hand delivers it to southwest cargo, where it sits inside a climate control room till loaded on the commercial plane. Then it arrive directly to your airport within few hours of flight time and into my hands. Commercial planes have livestock special compartments where they are also climeate controlled.

Or you go to pick up your pallet of fish and it is sitting on the tarmac in the blazing sun or driving snow because somebody at the cargo terminal can’t read the labels or manifest instructions.