Shipping Corals Dry

[Jason_J]

I have received a couple of shipments of coral recently from reputable sources that were DOA. This led me to start thinking about coral shipment methods and why this is still happening so frequently in 2019 when we have been shipping corals for decades.

After digging through my memory banks I remembered that some of us started shipping corals (mainly acros) back in the mid 2000s "dry" with great success; simply wrapped in wet paper towels. In fact, I can't remember ever having a DOA from the corals I shipped or bought using this method.

Eric Borneman had an excellent article about this in the Nov 2005 edition of Reef Keeping magazine: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-11/eb/index.php

I tried doing some searching on here to see if anyone was using this method of shipping and found very little information and am curious why the idea never really took hold. I assume it is because the idea of shipping some dry is so counter intuitive to how we thing about the fragility of the organisms we keep and their dependence on water.

I would love to hear others experiences with this method or other shipping methods as it would be nice to increase our chances of success.

 

[Wilsonfeliz]

Following

 

[Dana Riddle]

I carried some Sarcophyton specimens home from Austin, Texas about a year ago. They were wrapped in a wet paper towel within a small empty fish food container and made the 20 hour trek home in fine shape (from time of packing to unpacking.) There are a couple of papers written on the 'dry shipping' method. One used wet sawdust. Personally, I think any coral kept moist/wet and warm will ship OK.

I have received a couple of shipments of coral recently from reputable sources that were DOA. This led me to start thinking about coral shipment methods and why this is still happening so frequently in 2019 when we have been shipping corals for decades.

After digging through my memory banks I remembered that some of us started shipping corals (mainly acros) back in the mid 2000s "dry" with great success; simply wrapped in wet paper towels. In fact, I can't remember ever having a DOA from the corals I shipped or bought using this method.

Eric Borneman had an excellent article about this in the Nov 2005 edition of Reef Keeping magazine: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-11/eb/index.php

I tried doing some searching on here to see if anyone was using this method of shipping and found very little information and am curious why the idea never really took hold. I assume it is because the idea of shipping some dry is so counter intuitive to how we thing about the fragility of the organisms we keep and their dependence on water.

I would love to hear others experiences with this method or other shipping methods as it would be nice to increase our chances of success.

 

[GoatmealJones]

I would imagine the success of this method varies largely from coral species group to species group (ie LPS vs SPS, soft vs hard)

 

[dansreef]

Thanks for jogging my feeble memory... when I first got into the hobby in college... late 80's.... I worked part-time at a LFS. That is exactly how we got in our coral shipments. I always thought it was weird... but as you say it worked pretty well. In fact, we would also import really really nice reef rock with all sorts of life on it. We never QT'd anything. We had a holding tank and as soon as the rock came in with all sorts of life on it.... guys would snatch it up. We never really saw the challenges of losses I see now. Or at least I don't remember the losses....

Of course, shipping was much different then....

 

[reacclimating 2 the hobby]

I guess my question would be... what would make any coral survive better wrapped in a wet towel better then traveling in the water they have been striving in? The packaging on most of the members on here is much further advanced then it was back even just a few years ago.

 

[hotdrop]

You might get better oxygen exchange in wet paper/sawdust and you won’t get a ph swing. Also exposure like that may be more normal for the coral. So counterintuitively it might be better way to ship.

You would have to test it on a large scale though, to get statistical significance in your data. Nobody is large enough to do that kind of R&D work in the industry.

Just roughly speaking maybe you could setup an experiment where you ship out 200 cheap frags by 2 day air using different packaging methods and see if you get favorable survival rates with one method over the other.

Depending on typical survival rates for frags using 2 day air that might be still be a too low sample size though

 

[jda]

We used to ship in thermos via USPS 2 day as well - wrapped corals in wet paper towels (good ones) and put them in a bag for a 2 day journey. It would not work so well now for SPS... they are under lit with people purposefully stressing them out by increasing building block levels... IMO, SPS are not as healthy as they used to be when alk/temp/whatever swings and the smallest misplaced number on an IC test DID NOT cause them to STN or RTN all of the time.

This might just be a thing of the past.

 

[hotdrop]

Doesn’t stressing them out also create more vivid colors? It makes sense that corals would come shipped supper stressed because vendors want top dollar for colorful looking coral. If it changes back to normal after a couple months who is to say that that isn’t the end users fault

 

[fish farmer]

I've never shipped corals.....but I ship trout eggs moist all the time. Wrapped in fine wet cheese cloth, sectioned off in styrofoam egg boxes, flat packed about a half inch deep. I can pack around 6 quarts in a box. Ice on the bottom and top tray for wetting/cooling purposes. Shipped overnight via the carrier of your choice, they can survive two days in the box if it's cool, but it's best to get there overnight.