This week was spent doing some research on Styrofoam inserts for our shipping boxes. We primarily use USPS Priority Mail shipping boxes for our live fish shipping. In the colder months and sometimes during the hot summer months, these boxes must have Styrofoam liners to keep the fish warm or cool during shipping. On average, we pay $2.30 per Styrofoam liner purchased through an aquatics shipping supply company. In an attempt to lower our shipping cost for customers, we ordered a custom made insert directly from a manufacturer. The up side is that we can bypass the middle man and purchase the Styrofoam liners cheaper. The down side is that we have to order 600 sets at a time. Since this is a first for us, we will see how the finished product turned out and let you know next weekend during the Sunday update.

On another good note, we were able to purchase a couple more pairs of discus which will be delivered this week. This will let us increase our discus varieties (if everything goes as planned) to 4 or 5 varieties. The down side with discus is that the fry need a lot of room to grow out compared to Angelfish or Guppies. 

The International Fancy Guppy Association sanctioned show in Chicago, takes place in a couple weeks. We will be sending our Red Dragon (HB AOC) and Red Albinos to the show. With a little luck, we will place. We will also be donating the fish that we send to be auctioned at the end of the show to benefit the IFGA. Currently we also have a few tank full of the Red Albinos which are being grown out to possibly compete in the IFGA Annual show this fall.

This weeks blog post photo is a picture of one of our Red Dragon Guppy males. These were produced by crossing a strain from an American breeder and some we imported from an amazing breeder in Thialand. The American strain had bigger bodies and the Thia strain had more intense color. 

Last, I would like to finish by thanking our customers for purchasing our fish through the cold winter months. Now that spring is here, we expect to experience fewer issues with shipping.