Shipping info
Q: Shipping
A: We ship via USPS Priority mail and Fedex Monday through Thursday. Priority Mail is $19.99 up to $149.99. Orders over $150.00 can be shipped for FREE via 1-3 day Priority Mail. Free shipping is not available for Hawaii or Alaska orders.
You can also select FedEX Priority Overnight for your order. FedEX is a Flat Rate based for your state. You can check the price to use FedEX from this chart. https://www.tampabaycichlids.com/pages/fedex-rate-chart
Q: Shipping days
A: We ship Monday through Thursday with Fedex Overnight and Monday through Thursday with Priority Mail. "Overnight shipping" refers only to the method by which the package carrier will deliver your fish.
Q: How do you prepare my order for shipping? Will they live three days in the box?
A: Your fish will be professionally bagged with oxygen, an ammonia remover, and a mild sedative in a heavy duty, professional fish packing bag. We use a non-toxic, recycled packing material to cushion and prevent bags from moving around much in shipping and it also acts as an adsorbent in case a small amount of water leaks during shipping. When necessary, we add heat packs to your order to keep them warm if they are traveling through colder areas. The sedative we use may affect different fish in your order in different ways. Some fish may look and act normal as soon as they are put into your tank while others will be very sluggish and almost completely sedated. All fish should be back to their normal state by the next morning. Your fish can easily survive the three-day trip or even longer as long as the post office or Fedex keep them indoors during the trip and out of the cold or hot weather. One trick some of my customers use if no one can get them inside right away is to leave a cooler on the front porch with a inside dimension or at least 16 inches long and 12 x 12 inches wide and tall. You can leave it near the front door with a message on top for the Fedex driver to leave the fish inside.
Q: Do you ship to Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico?
A: Yes. We ship to Alaska via FedEx Overnight. You will need to contact us and we will get a shipping quote for you. As a rule, FedEX overnight is not that expensive based on the fact so many time-critical parts are shipped to Alaska for the fishing, mining, and oil industries.
Hawaii requires you to jump through some hoops to get fish from the mainland. They require you to get an agricultural permit to import fish. You can find more info about that here: http://hdoa.hawaii.gov/pi/pq/travel-shipping-information/importing-animals-to-hawai%CA%BBi-from-the-u-s-mainland/
We ship to Puerto Rico via USPS and usually takes two to three days.
If you have other questions that we're not answered here then please check out our faq page.