bag with fish and water (no air) also have their origin in a dressing for surgery. The wound could breathe, but not leak fluids.
Kordon Corporation has sold those bags for years and finally ran out of their supply last year. They announced that they wouldn't be selling them any more. There was an outpouring of support for those bags from aquarists and they decided to have another batch manufactured.
I was so pleased I called them up, after checking their site on-line http://www.novalek.com/kordon/index.htm
and had the bags delivered to my hotel for the NANFA convention last September. Figured that would be a nice way of saying thank-you.
I was very impressed with how our host in Phoenix Allan Semeit was packing killies and livebearers in small breather bags. A fish and a couple of ounces of water was inserted in the bottom, the bag was draped carefully over an electric bag sealer and sealed. The mate to that fish was put in what became the next compartment with a couple ounces of water and sealed. Then a label with popular name, scientific name and collecting location (if any) was sealed in the last segment of the bag.
Those bags do need to be packed with pieces of cardboard or styrofoam between the bags so that the bags continue to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide. Bags touching each other cancel each other out on the touching sides because there is no access to the air. My worries about somebody getting crushed were fortunately for naught.
One of the pairs of fish I brought home was in such a package as that described above. I get claustrophobic on behalf of the fish, but it doesn't seem to bother them. I was able to bring four pairs home from Phoenix to Chicagoland. They were packed in a small 6x6x8 inch thick-walled styrofoam box and then packed between layers of clothing to cushion the bouncing they would get being loaded and unleaded from the plane and baggage conveyor belts.
Some of "my" fish were also separated bagged in conventional fish bags and some of them had to have been in those bags 5-6 days when one considers the day for packing, travel, the weekend workshop, flight home and weary process of unpacking and placing each pair in their own quarters.
They all made it! They seem in better shape than a couple of the fish left home.
Small, cold-blooded fish, fasted for two days before packing, evidently just "go on hold" when separately bagged and put in the dark. If the packing keeps them from extremes in temperature and the pounding luggage can take, they do fine.
I accept that (more or less) intellectually. But there is still a sense of wonder looking at those little gems swimming around a fish tank, begging for food, knowing that over the preceding week they traveled from 1,700 to almost 4,000 miles, sometimes on a couple of flights and several hours of automobile traffic. And I couldn't help slipping off from the baggage pick up area, to a quiet corner of Midway Airport, to open my bag and see if they were alright.
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