Fish Importing, from the farm to the home

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Colin_T

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If any of you have wondered how aquarium fish get to the local pet shop, the following will give you some insight as to what they have to go through to get from the fish farm where they are bred and raised, to the pet shop where you can buy them.

The stress they go through is quite considerable, yet most of them survive. However, sometimes the fish are just too weak due to the stresses of being shipped half way around the world, being put into numerous different tanks with different water chemistry, caught repeatedly in nets, bagged up, given strange food and basically having their lives turned upside down. Considering what fish go through, it's amazing that any survive.

Most fish deaths in aquariums are a combination of stress from poor water quality, over crowding, lack of food, low oxygen levels, sudden changes in pH, and diseases. The following is a brief (well sort of) run down of how most aquarium fish make it to local pet shops where they can be bought.

Most aquarium fish come from fish farms in Asia. They are grown in outdoor ponds using whatever water is available. It might be river water, rain water, well water or even sewerage. Thousands of fish are kept in these ponds for several months while they grow. They are extremely overcrowded in the ponds. They get fed flake, pellets and live foods like daphnia. The daphnia and other live foods are often grown in sewerage ponds. These conditions where the fish are grown cause the fish to become infested with intestinal worms, gill flukes, protozoan parasites and various other disease organisms.

The ponds the fish are grown in don't always have the best water chemistry for the species. Many livebearers are grown in rain water and salt (sodium chloride) is added to the water to stop them dying. Whilst this can keep the fish alive, it isn't the best for them in the long run.

When the fish are big enough to be sold, they are netted out of the pond with big drag nets. They are put into plastic storage containers or buckets and left in the sun for however long it takes to get all the fish out of the pond. The buckets do not normally have aeration and a 40 litre (10 gallon) plastic storage container that is half full of water, might contain several hundred adult mollies. It's basically a container of liquid fish. These containers of fish are then taken to a shed where the fish are sorted. This usually entails a group of children and women sitting around buckets of fish, catching them out one at a time with a spoon or by hand, and putting them into other buckets of water. The fish are sorted by size, colour, fins, etc. While the fish are being sorted and fasted they do have aeration.

After the sorting process they are usually fasted for 24 hours before being bagged up and sent to an exporter.

Lots of fish are put into each bag with only a small amount of water and the bag is filled with oxygen. Think 50 adult mollies in a couple of litres of water sealed up in a plastic shopping bag. The fish are in these bags for anywhere up to 24 hours or more while they travel from the fish farm to the exporter. Normally the fish are taken to the exporter by vehicle and many of the roads are dirt roads that have lots of bumps and potholes in them. The fish that are overcrowded in the bags, often bounce around in the back of a truck while they are driven to the exporters. This is also in tropical Asia where the temperature can get pretty hot, 40C (104F). There is not normally any airconditioning in these vehicles or the packing facilities at the fish farm. Basically there will be a family with kids and adults working outdoors or under a tin roof.

While the fish are in the bags, the pH drops to really low levels (sometimes it drops below a pH of 5.0). The ammonia levels go up but the toxicity of the ammonia is minimised by the low pH. However, the low pH and ammonia still harms the fish.

At one of the importers I worked at, we tested the pH of the water in bags of fish that had just arrived in Australia, and the pH in some bags was as low as 3.8. Battery acid in a car battery has a pH of about 3.0 and will dissolve paint. So a pH of 3.8 is paint stripper or battery acid and yet there were live fish in these bags.

When the fish get to the exporters, they are acclimatised to tanks and the pH is gradually increased a bit but not too much. The fish are held at the exporters in overstocked tanks until they are required for an order that will be sent overseas to the US, UK, Australia or somewhere else. The fish are not fed much while at the exporters. The exporters tanks are usually bare glass aquariums with no substrate, ornaments, plants or picture on the back.

When an order has been received, the fish are fasted for another 24 hours before being bagged up, put in eskies and sent to the airport where they get loaded onto an aircraft and flown to a different country. When fish are shipped by plane they are very heavily packed. You might have 100 mollies in a couple of litres of water with a pH of 5.0. The rest of the bag will be filled with oxygen and sealed up. That bag is then put inside another bag and sealed up. The bag of fish is then put into a white foam esky, which is then sealed up.

When the fish get to the new country, the eskies might be checked by customs/ quarantine to make sure there are only fish in them. In Australia all the eskies are opened and every bag of fish is visually inspected by a quarantine officer. If no snails, plants or unusual fish are found, the fish are released to the importer. This inspection process takes place at the airport and can take 5 or 6 hours, sometimes longer. This means the fish are in the bags for longer.

Once the fish have been released by customs/ quarantine, they are put in a vehicle and driven to the importers holding tanks. At the importers facility, the bags of fish are left to float in the quarantine tanks. When the temperatures have become similar the bags are opened and some tank water and oxygen is added to the bags and they are sealed back up. Eventually the fish are poured into nets held over large containers and the toxic ammonia filled water is poured into the containers, and the net full of fish is added to an aquarium. After all the fish are put into the quarantine tanks, the containers of ammonia filled water are disinfected with chlorine to kill anything in it.

There are usually several hundred bags of fish and sometimes thousands of bags of fish that come in the same shipment so it can take many hours to open each bag and put the fish into the tanks. We use to start work at 8am and a shipment of fish would arrive at 12 noon. There were lots of shipments of fish that we would still be putting fish into tanks at 2am the following day.

The quarantine tanks are bare glass aquariums with no substrate, plants, ornaments or picture on the back. It is just a bar glass tank with a filter and airstone. At this stage the fish have been in bags for around 24-48 hours, sometimes longer.

The fish spend the next few weeks in the quarantine tanks where they recover from their trip and are treated for diseases. When the fish are cleared from quarantine and are allowed to be sold, they are caught, bagged up, put in eskies and sent to shops around the country. Some importers have to hold fish for longer than 2 weeks, in Australia we have to quarantine all fish for 4 weeks. In the US it is my understanding they don't have to quarantine fish at all, but most importers do just to let the fish settle and recover a bit.

After all this the fish get sent to pet shops and are put into new tanks with gravel and maybe some plants and ornaments and they live there until they die from disease or get bought by someone. If they get bought by someone, the fish are caught again (often within a few hours or days of being put into the tank), bagged up and sent home where they get put into a fish tank that might have been cycled and might have completely different water to where the fish was bred in Asia.

This all happens within a few weeks. One day the fish is swimming around a pond in Asia, and a couple of weeks later it is in a 2ft tank at someone's house, where the water is completely different to where the fish grew up. And quite often that water is completely different to what the fish's ancestors evolved in out in the wild.

All of this catching, moving, flying to different countries, going into different tanks, being exposed to extremely low pH levels and very high ammonia levels, starving, being overcrowded, bouncing around in the back of a hot metal truck, and generally treated like crap, takes its toll on the fish. It's amazing that the number of fish that die during this process is so low, generally around 10-20% of the fish sent out from fish farms die during this period, going from fish farm to the pet shop where you buy them. Potentially more die at the pet shop and at people's homes but most fish actually survive the process. Unfortunately the cumulative effects of this travel and rehoming and travel and rehoming does take its toll on fish and many die a few months after they get to your house. They die from stress caused by the damage associated with the low pH, high ammonia, and everything else linked to the experience.

If you can get locally bred fish, they usually do a lot better than imported fishes. And if you can breed the fish at your own home, the babies usually do very well purely due to the lack of stress.
 
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Interesting read Coln_T. Good 'article'.
I am surprised that you don't have some fish farms in Australia as it would seem there are places where it could be done?
Here in the US we have many fish farms in the south east (especially Florida), some in California, and others in buildings in northern sates. Additionally, there are many hobbyist/breeders (I myself have bred and sent about 12 dozen fish to LFS's.) That's not to say that some fish aren't imported and there is still some stress involved in shipping even within the US.
Last, as you mention, shipping in bags causes the pH to lower. This is actually a good thing as with the lower pH, ammonia is converted to much less harmful ammonium. If not for this, shipping would be nearly impossible.
This is also why the "plop and drop' method is best for shipped fish. Because if, for example, drip acclimation was used, the pH would increase, the ammonium would convert back to ammonia, and likely kill the fish!
:)
 
I am surprised that you don't have some fish farms in Australia as it would seem there are places where it could be done?
We do have a few fish farms in Australia but most of them deal with trout or goldfish. There are a number of trout farms in the southern part of the country that produce fingerlings, which get released into the native water ways for recreational fishing. Unfortunately they eat the native species but the government doesn't seem to care about that. Instead the government makes it illegal to keep and supply various natives fishes from the southern parts of the country. It's a stupid double standard with the government releasing introduced species for recreational anglers but banning people from keeping and breeding endemic species that regularly get eaten by the introduced species.

We have a couple of goldfish farms in the southern states and these supply a lot of the common goldfish. Any goldfish that get brought into Australia must be vet checked in Asia and are not allowed into our country unless they have a vet certificate saying they are GUD (goldfish ulcer disease) free. The irony of this is GUD is regularly found in goldfish that come from the Australian farms. So the government prevents the disease coming into the country but it is being spread around the country by the locally produced fish.

In the northern half of the country there are a couple of places that breed tropical native fishes like rainbowfish and gudgeons. The people doing this started out as hobbyists whose hobby got out of control. :)

There are a lot of cichlids bred by locals all around the country and most African cichlids are locally bred here. Most other common aquarium fishes are brought into the country along with huge numbers of tropical marine fish from tropical Asia and Indonesia. This is bizarre too because the country is surrounded by ocean and most of the fish coming from Indonesia are found in Australian waters. But it's cheaper to import marines from Asia than it is to collect them locally.
 
What a heartbreaking story! I sell all of my black moor babies to a Lfs. They take all I can give them. They told me they know mine are well cared for and grow faster than imported ones. Their reputation lies in the quality of fish they receive. I only buy my bettas from breeders here in the states too.
 
I know this is an older thread but JEEEZ! I knew fish went through lots of stress during transportation, but that? That is pure torture! I really don't understand why humans have to be so greedy at times to do these things.
 

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