The title is a joke! :evil_lol: Don't flame me. 
I'm mostly just writing to vent about my stressful day. I do currently have 7 clowns in a 55, but it's only temporary. As you may know, AC member Zebulon is moving out to Hawaii and shipping his clown loaches with him. After he's settled, he's setting up a 180 gallon tank, and adopting my own clowns.
So, yesterday he shipped his 4 clowns and 1 gold barb to me. The plan is that I will board all the fish until he gets his big tank set up.
Well, shipping did not go smoothly. Zeb did a fine job packing the fish, with breather bags in a nice foam-lined box designed for shipping fish. But the box was badly mishandled by someone along the way. The foam lining was cracked along a diagonal, as if it had been dropped on its corner.
But I didn't find that out until later. I got a call this morning, from a woman at the agricultural department, saying that she couldn't release the fish to me, because the permit wasn't in my name. She also said, "One of them looks dead." I asked her if there was any way I could get the fish and at least take care of them temporarily while the permit issue was worked out, but she said no.
To make a long story short, she was flat out wrong. I finally got hold of her supervisor, who said that there actually was no rule saying that the name on the permit has to be the name of the recipient, so he instructed her to release the fish. When she called me back to say that I could come pick them up, I asked how they were doing, and she said that another one looked dead.
She said, "It's running out of water."
I said, "Is the bag broken? Could you please just put that one fish in a cup of water until I get there?"
She said, "No, I can't do that."
I don't know. I didn't know how to respond to that. I'm just not the kind of person who could ever stand by and watch an animal dying slowly and not do something about it. So before I totally lost it at this lady, I said, "Ok, I'll be there as soon as possible."
I showed up with a bucket and some of my own tank water. I opened the box in the parking lot, and that's where I discovered the cracked lining and 2 broken bags. One clown and the gold barb had already passed away. But another clown was barely hanging on, due to a teeny bit of water that was clinging to him in the bag. The 2 clowns whose bags were not damaged were fine. I consolidated all 3 clowns into one bag and took them home, where I immediately started a very slow drip acclimation.
Ok, so finally, here's some good news. The 3 who made it through shipping are all doing fine. Here's a pic of them in the bucket during acclimation.
They're in my tank now, much to the surprise of my own clowns, but everyone seems to be getting along. They're all sleeping together. I'd get a pic, but lights are out.
To sum it all up, I feel just rotten about the fish that didn't make it. It was a horrible sight to see upon opening the box. But I'm glad that the rest of them seem healthy, considering the circumstances. And I know that Zeb is going to set up an awesome tank for them all when he gets here, and my own clowns will finally get the big tank they need and an owner committed to caring for them.
But, man, what a day......
I'm mostly just writing to vent about my stressful day. I do currently have 7 clowns in a 55, but it's only temporary. As you may know, AC member Zebulon is moving out to Hawaii and shipping his clown loaches with him. After he's settled, he's setting up a 180 gallon tank, and adopting my own clowns.
So, yesterday he shipped his 4 clowns and 1 gold barb to me. The plan is that I will board all the fish until he gets his big tank set up.
Well, shipping did not go smoothly. Zeb did a fine job packing the fish, with breather bags in a nice foam-lined box designed for shipping fish. But the box was badly mishandled by someone along the way. The foam lining was cracked along a diagonal, as if it had been dropped on its corner.
But I didn't find that out until later. I got a call this morning, from a woman at the agricultural department, saying that she couldn't release the fish to me, because the permit wasn't in my name. She also said, "One of them looks dead." I asked her if there was any way I could get the fish and at least take care of them temporarily while the permit issue was worked out, but she said no.
To make a long story short, she was flat out wrong. I finally got hold of her supervisor, who said that there actually was no rule saying that the name on the permit has to be the name of the recipient, so he instructed her to release the fish. When she called me back to say that I could come pick them up, I asked how they were doing, and she said that another one looked dead.
She said, "It's running out of water."
I said, "Is the bag broken? Could you please just put that one fish in a cup of water until I get there?"
She said, "No, I can't do that."
I don't know. I didn't know how to respond to that. I'm just not the kind of person who could ever stand by and watch an animal dying slowly and not do something about it. So before I totally lost it at this lady, I said, "Ok, I'll be there as soon as possible."
I showed up with a bucket and some of my own tank water. I opened the box in the parking lot, and that's where I discovered the cracked lining and 2 broken bags. One clown and the gold barb had already passed away. But another clown was barely hanging on, due to a teeny bit of water that was clinging to him in the bag. The 2 clowns whose bags were not damaged were fine. I consolidated all 3 clowns into one bag and took them home, where I immediately started a very slow drip acclimation.
Ok, so finally, here's some good news. The 3 who made it through shipping are all doing fine. Here's a pic of them in the bucket during acclimation.
They're in my tank now, much to the surprise of my own clowns, but everyone seems to be getting along. They're all sleeping together. I'd get a pic, but lights are out.
To sum it all up, I feel just rotten about the fish that didn't make it. It was a horrible sight to see upon opening the box. But I'm glad that the rest of them seem healthy, considering the circumstances. And I know that Zeb is going to set up an awesome tank for them all when he gets here, and my own clowns will finally get the big tank they need and an owner committed to caring for them.
But, man, what a day......
