That turned into quite an adventure to get these fish and snails here! After an initial delay from last week due to poor weather in Kentucky, the next delivery date was shipping Monday with delivery Tuesday. The weather didn’t look great at the time, but I had until 10:30A on Monday to decide if I wanted to delay again.
It turned out the weather showed no precipitation and the daytime high was in the 40’s. I called anyway just to make sure that was OK because the overnight temps were in the 20’s. Apparently, they have systems in place to enable them to ship down to -20F. Holy cow! Needless to say, they saw no reason to delay due to temperature and they didn’t see any reason that we needed to hold off on the delivery. “Ship it!”
Tuesday morning rolls around and I wake up to check the UPS tracking data. Both shipments (one from ORA in FL and one from LA in CA) arrived in Kentucky and were on the plane bound for Philadelphia. This was at 5:30A and I thought it was odd the plane hadn’t left yet, but whatever… I should have trusted my intuition. I looked outside and we got a surprise dusting of snow.. It was maybe 1/4″ so I figured it would be fine. As luck would have it, the plane got delayed in Kentucky. It eventually left, but didn’t get to Philadelphia until almost 8:00A. “OK,” I thought, “It just needs to get to West Chester and then onto a truck to get to me, should be fine.” I got an email during this time from UPS saying my package would be delivered, but wouldn’t make the 10:30A window. Still OK, so long as they get here today…
At 9:40A both packages arrive at the West Chester sorting facility. 12:30P rolls around and they’re still showing that they are sitting there. I reach out to UPS and they say odds are they aren’t going to make it to me today. Naturally, I said I would drive the 45 minutes to the facility to get the boxes myself. I drive over there and….
“Sorry, those went out for delivery on the regular truck. He should be there in about 45 minutes.” ARGGHHHH!!! I speed home and… nothing. 4:30P rolls around and the driver still isn’t here. He’s normally here well before then, so I call to make sure I didn’t miss him. Long story short… he showed up 20 minutes later and apologized for all of the runaround.
I was freaking out that everything was going to be dead. To my surprise, everything was warm and still alive! I floated the fish for 20 minutes to temperature acclimate them. I tested the water, expecting salinity to be 1.023 like Live Aquaria told me. What did I find…? The bag from ORA was 1.020 and the bags from Live Aquaria were 1.022 I quickly adjusted the QT salinity and in they went.
That’s all for now, but more updates to follow!