Shipping Information
To answer your first question: I do ship anywhere in the country. I get more questions on this than I do for what fish that I have for sale. I will try and answer your questions here and give you sites that you can look up the information yourself.
How I pack: first off, I do not feed my (your) fish for a couple of days to purge them out. I add about ½ water from the tank and the other ½ fresh clean water. I do pack the fish in Oxygen (except catfish), and add a bit of PolyFilter to keep the ammonia down. All fish are double bagged and placed into Styrofoam fish boxes. I add a heat pack at no extra charge.
First some assumptions: In all cases you are charged by weight, but sometimes the size of the box can change the charged weight (referred to as the Dimensional Weight, and only applies to express shipping). A standard small fish box is 18"x18"x10". This box can hold up to six 9x18 bags. If the maximum number of bags is used, the weight is about 24 pounds. In this example, the Dimensional Weight of this box is 16 pounds, so if the weight is less than 16 pounds, you will be charged at the 16 pound rate.
All shipping will be done on an express basis, meaning that it will be there that day or the next day. USPS (US Postal Service) service is not guaranteed for live arrival, but all others are.
Here are the different methods of shipping:
My favorite way of shipping, as long as you don't mind going to the airport to pick up the shipment, and that Southwest flies into the airport. Prices start at about $53 for up to 100 pounds, and that is anywhere Southwest flies. A recent order of seven boxes and 194 pounds was only $95. By the way, Southwest now flies into Denver.
Delta is a bit more expensive but they go to many more airports in the East and South. They start at about $80, and you still will have to go to the airport to pick up the shipment. Sometimes you can not get the shipment until the second day.
Frontier is slightly cheaper than Southwest, but they do go to Denver. I have only used them once, and I wasn't too happy but that may have been an anomaly. Also, their website does not have pricing information or tracking abilities.
If it can't go airfreight, then I like FedEx the best. This is more expensive and is based on weight and distance. And, they go everywhere! The standard package could be about $47 to within 200 miles of Santa Clara, California (where I'm located) to $140 for a Saturday delivery in New York. There are several different extra charges that can be added or saved. If you can have it delivered to your place of business, that can save you a few dollars. Having the package delivered at the 3:00 pm time can save as much as $20. Saturday deliveries are an additional $20, but if you go to the FedEx office, they waive that charge. If you live within about 700 miles, you can use the Home delivery and instead of $60 for overnight, the cost is about $10 and it gets there in two days.
This is one of the cheapest ways to get fish, unfortunately, they have a bad reputation of losing fish and taking too long. The most time fish can spend in the bag is about 60 hours, assuming they are packed correctly and that they have not been fed for a few days. I have used the USPS, and the shipment was successful, but I am now having problems using Priority Mail and the Express mail is not getting out in a timely manner. There are two tiers at the USPS: Express Mail and Priority Mail. Express mail is almost as expensive as FedEx and it is supposed to be overnight (guaranteed). Priority is two day but it is much less expensive. Prices are based totally on weight, not distance. I no longer recommend USPS due to all of the problems that I am having with them and I will not guarantee live arrival for any fish shipped thru the postal service.
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