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How to Transport Fish Home from An Aquarium Store
Once you have paid for the fish you just bought and left the aquarium, you are responsible for getting them home safely.
On the way home with the fish, put them out of the children’s reach. The fish is easily stressed and squeezed into the bag. Do not take the fish out of the brown bag or expose the fish to light.
When the store catches the fish for you, tell them when you are going home. This allows the store to fill your fish bag with enough oxygen to ensure that you can take the fish home safely. With the proper package, the fish can be transported in a sealed plastic bag for 24 hours or more. Fish packing should be done by professionals, so you’d better not try it at home.
In a bag with 1/3 water and 2/3 air, if you don’t have too many fish, they should easily survive for several hours. If you use 1/3 water and 1/3 pure oxygen, the fish can survive longer, so some aquarium stores often use pure oxygen in the package.
The transportation time of the fish should also include – the time it takes to adapt to the water temperature of the aquarium at home after taking it home because once you take the fish home, you need to float the bag with the fish on the surface of the aquarium for a while. You have a certain amount of time to bring the fish home safely after you buy the fish.
The plastic bag for the fish is usually placed in a brown paper bag and a bag that can carry the fish home. The purpose of the brown paper bag is to block the light, calm the fish, and provide a certain degree of isolation.
2 things that are important when taking your fish home
- Keep warm
If you want to transport tropical fish, you must first maintain the temperature of the water. When the water becomes cold, the fish will be stressed and then easily infected with white spot disease; if the water temperature becomes even lower, the fish may die.
The best way to keep the water temperature during long-distance transportation is to put the polyethylene bag containing the fish in a special polystyrene insulation box, which can be purchased from aquarium stores. This can prevent the fish from being affected by the cold temperature or extreme heat, and avoid bumps and impacts. A medium-sized polystyrene insulation box can hold 8–12 bags of fish, so it is worth buying one and putting it in the car when you go to the aquarium store. The aquarium also has a small insulated box that can only hold a bag of fish.
If you don’t have a polystyrene insulation box, wrap the bag with a towel or sweatshirt to keep the water warm. If you are driving, you can use the heat of the car engine to maintain the temperature of the fish bag through a fan, or you can use the car air conditioner, but make sure it is not too hot, because the high temperature will also put pressure on the fish. More importantly, high temperatures can also reduce the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water.
- Keep the fish safe
Now that you have ensured the proper water temperature during transportation, your next responsibility is to ensure that the fish is brought home quickly. In all the processes of keeping fish, you need to make sure that the stress on the fish is minimal. Wrap the fish bag in a towel or put it in a box to block the light and help the fish calm down. As mentioned earlier, the polystyrene insulation box is the best way to transport fish due to its insulation and shake absorption capabilities, but it should be placed flat in the trunk of the car. If the insulated box is not used, the fish bag must be fixed or kept upright, to prevent the fish bag from rolling over during transportation, and to prevent the water from splashing too much.
Medium-sized bags can fit well into the foot space of the rear passenger seat of a car, and medium-sized to large-sized bags can even be fastened to the seat with a seat belt. Do not put the fish bags in the trunk of the car, because the fish bags will keep rolling around on the way home, and do not hang them in the trunk, because the fish bags will sway from side to side and hit both sides of the trunk, the fish will be hit and may die as a result.
5 things to do when transporting fish
- Tell the aquarium store how far your trip is.
- Put these fish bags in a polystyrene box and keep them warm (if the journey takes 1 hour or more).
- Keep the fish in the dark.
- Secure the fish bags so that they will not roll.
- Go home as soon as possible.
