Reeftanktraveler
Community Member
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 Quarantined Fish
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Dr. Reef
www.drreefsquarantinedfish.com
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
Active Member
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
www.drreefsquarantinedfish.com
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.
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.
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Dr. Reef
www.drreefsquarantinedfish.com
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"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 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.
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.
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
www.drreefsquarantinedfish.com
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
www.drreefsquarantinedfish.com
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.
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.
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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
Valuable Member
I have ordered a lot of my fish from Dr. Reef and I too have also always had a very good experience.
trevorhiller
Reefing Nurse
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.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).
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.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.
Toob
Active Member
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.
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what can be done in 10 days?
If I am paying for for quarantined fish, 10 days doesn’t cut it.
I've appreciate the service @Dr. Reef provides! Once my new tank/merger is ready for new fish, I'll have an order out!
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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.
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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.
Dr. Reef
www.drreefsquarantinedfish.com
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.
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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.
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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.
