shipping chalice colonies advice

[cee]

I've shipped hundreds of SPS, acan, zoa frags and other LPS colonies but never large chalice colonies. Does anyone have experience with this? Are there any special tricks to improve the odds of survival? They're very expensive and fragile so I'd love to hear your experiences with doing this. Thanks in advance.

Dave

 

[Nicks387]

If you have shipped sps with no problems you should be fine. You already know the drill, Styro lined box, tripple bags etc etc. This time of year I never use heat packs. I go nothing if its going to a cool area below 80's or a cold pack if its higher then 80. I see some people still use heat packs in this weather. I say no way. Its better they are cold then hot. If its expensive chalices use as much water as your willing to pay for in shipping costs. More water means more stability less problems. Its more money but when your talking thousand dollar pieces its a small investment. Also, try and put something to prevent it from knocking around too much, like a piece of plastic bag inside the bag over the chalice to keep tumbling to a minimum. Another good one is to glue the chalices base down inside a cup or small tupperware container then put the container in the bag. This keeps the chalice from making any contact with anything. I hope that makes sense. Lastly, have the buyer pick up at the shipping location if he can. Best bet to keep it off a hot truck as much as you can.
Thats it. Good luck.