Transporting Fish

OK, so I haven't been paying much attention to my tank, but would like to do a bit of restocking and such. My problem is that the only local place that sold fish has stopped selling them. Now I have to drive about 1 1/2 hours to a fish store. I have gotten them there before, but sadly the last time I did most died on the drive home.

So what is a good, cheap way of getting fish from point A (pet store) to point B (my house)?

Get a plastic, fish-safe bucket and lid. I use cleaned-out plastic cat litter buckets. Get a battery-driven air pump on-line or from a fishing store. When you get the fish to your car, open the bags and pour them in to the buckets (one for each batch of fish unless they're from the same tank). Put in the air stone. Put on the lid and be sure the fish can't jump out. That should take care of the oxygen situation. If the problem is water quality, add in some Amquel which detoxifies ammonia and conditions the water at the same time. Normally, fish under oxygen are fine for a few hours on a drive home so I'm not sure what happened to your fish before.

When I had an aquarium, the the owner of the store I went to used to go to New york City every Thursday to get fish, and that's over 2 1/2 hours from where the store was. He used to have the fish in very big clear plastic bags, which he transported in large foam chests like the ones people use as coolers. If you take your own bags and coolers to the store, will the owner use them instead of the little plastic bags most use?

I have no idea if they would use them or not. I dont see why not.

I do have a good sized cooler that I never use, so maybe if I filled that 3/4 with treated water and put the fish directly in there they would be ok for the trip?

Yeah, I would think 1 1/2 hours wouldn't have been to long either. Thanks for the ideas!!

I use large plastic bags and a foam box too, to take large goldfish to the vet which is at least a 2 to 2.5 hour round trip when you include time spent at the vet and floating the fish when they get back to the pond. One of the fish was very sick when it was transported and it survived just fine.

If you don't use plastic bags how will you float the fish when you get them home?

Hi Route3drummer
Depending on what you want ? Tropical or cold water.
When we transport our Koi to shows we use a styrofoam trype box the two large plastic bags two in number and a black bin liner.
You then part fill plastic bags with water catch in our case the koi then depending on size whether one koi goes into the bag 22" and over place one koi
12"-6" two Koi and 6"to smaller three koi.
If you have a large koi size airpump use that to top up bag with air, seal and tie the bag with air trapped iside plastic bags.
Place this into the black bin liner them into styrofoam box.
To avoid the fish being knocked about on journy place length wise over cars rear axle.Fish should then be left in tank until they acclimatize

rgds

Broxand Val

PS In all our years of showing fish from 1990 till now we have never lost a koi transporting it from A to B best of luck

Ahhhh....good point CG....me not thinking enough! LOL

Did the shop keeper fill the bags with air ?

I don't have a pump so I just do a half twist at the tops of the bags and slide in a length of plastic hose which I use to blow the bag up so it has plenty of air in it then I finish twisting and put on the rubber bands.

Good Point, Brox & ColdGold

When the store owner I mentioned above came back with the bags of fish from his wholesaler the bags were full of air above the water and and tightly sealed by the tops being twisted over and rubber bands around the top of the bag.

The store I went to has had several different owners since Arnold retired, but is still called Arnolds Pet Shop. He's been dead for years, but if he could see the condition of the store now, he'd die all over again.

Did the shop keeper fill the bags with air ?

I don't have a pump so I just do a half twist at the tops of the bags and slide in a length of plastic hose which I use to blow the bag up so it has plenty of air in it then I finish twisting and put on the rubber bands.

Hi ColdGold
For a niumber of years we used to use bottled Oxygen to top our bags up for shows but it proved expensive to hire the bottle each year and you'd only use it twice.
So as our journy's to shows are now under an hour away we decided to just use air.
Using an Air tec e 40 weve removed the large hose and the 2o air stone/pond manifold connectors , then added a long peice of the large hose to the pump, it fills the large koi bags in mere seconds.

http://www.koicarp.net/air_products/air_li..._manifolds.html

Re-rig for use in pond replace the 20 airstone/pond manifold connect to small bore air hose and plug back in.
rgrds
broxandval

Cheap solution....

l. Get yourself a couple of clean plastic jugs.

2. Before you go, use your blender and blend the heck out of the water to aerate.

3. Fill jugs with freshly blended H20

4. On trip back, if fish looks sluggish, give them some new highly oxygenated water.........

Whenever I have a sick fish in the house, I constantly change the water with freshly blended water. Family thinks I'm nuts...........

Thanks Sab,

...all I wanted to do was bring a couple of tetra's and molly's home!! LOL....don't think I want to get into anything too complicated or expensive for just that.

Hi Route3drummer
Ah why didn't you say we were thinking goldfish
rgrds
broxandval

my bad!

So I am basically thinking of just getting 6 or 7 neon tetras, a couple of cory's, a couple of snails.....thats about it. I currently only have 10 fish in my 29 gallon tank. Also want to get a few plants and take another try at getting them going.

I am thinking that if I just got them to limit the number of fish to 3 or 4 per bag, and had a large pail in the car so that the bags would stand upright and I could open the tops of them to allow for some air exchange....that should be good enough for a 1 1/2 hour car trip home??????