The combination of fish sizes and quantities could certainly be handled in 8 buckets (more fish than water, however). They just dumped them in with no acclimation, I'm sure. Not acclimating the fish is very common with fish suppliers and is not too big of a deal, but I prefer to acclimate my fish in five gallon buckets with no more than 2 pounds of fish per bucket and preferably 1 pound.

What I have found is that a 4-6" fish order is 90% - 4", 8% - 5" and 2% - 6". That's the main reason I like to be present to make sure they are at least in the range I ordered. I have had fish suppliers try to sell me fish that would be big enough to eat the smaller range that they had available in another species just because they were out of the size I wanted. Most fly-by-night suppliers don't care a lot about what they sell you. In my example, they were trying to sell me larger HSB and about 500 small HBG..that would have been expensive feed.

Another thing I like to do is use a floating net set-up and, after they are acclimated, dump them in the net and sort through them looking for species I did not order. I had a baby carp get into the pond with some FHM's once. No big deal, but a dozen carp would have upset me.

Most get away with just dumping them in and it is very common for large orders (think conservation lakes). My small pond allows the extra effort and peace of mind.


Fish on!,
Noel