Kordon Breather Bags
GENERAL INFORMATION ON KORDON'S BREATHING BAGS:
The Kordon® Breathing Bag represents a new approach to the problems of shipping live fishes and other aquatic animals over long distances or for extended time periods. The product development staff at Kordon, teamed with plastics chemical engineers, have taken a technology first developed in space/military research and refined it to produce the bags being offered today. The Breathing Bag allows the transfer of simple and complex gas molecules through the plastic wall of the bag -- carbon dioxide and oxygen in particular, as well as other gases - providing a true "breathing" bag in place of a "barrier" bag. As long as there is a normal breathable atmosphere outside the Breathing Bag, the animals inside will not run out of oxygen. Carbon dioxide exits the bags at 4 times the rate oxygen enters the bags, thereby constantly purging the water of toxic carbon dioxide, and allowing oxygen to replace it in the water. Kordon has shipped millions of bags (termed "Sachets") of living foods (tubifex worms, brine shrimp, daphnia, glass worms, etc.) for aquarium fishes using the Breathing Bag technology.
Prior to this invention, the only plastic bags available for shipping fishes were made of polyethylene and had no mechanism to allow the passage of gasses through the bag wall. When using these "barrier" bags, any oxygen must-of necessity-be added as a gas inside the bag prior to sealing. This process has many problems. High concentrations of oxygen can cause flammable conditions. The presence of oxygen inside the bag takes up a lot of valuable shipping space. Once the supplied oxygen is used up there is no more available. Toxic carbon dioxide from the fishes' breathing builds up in the water, displacing the oxygen. The oxygenated air in the bags may not be satisfactory for fishes' breathing, because (particularly from sources in underdeveloped countries), the bottled oxygen may be contaminated. A bag partially full of water with the rest filled with oxygen allows the contents to slosh during transport, stressing fishes.
METHODS FOR USE:
After adding water and fish, seal the bag with as little airspace as possible.
Except for those few kinds of fishes that are made uncomfortable by the lack of an air space at the surface, fishes adapt readily to the lack of an air space and it is not needed. It is best if there is no air pocket in the bag so that there is no water movement, keeping the fishes calmer. And uneeded air space also uses up valuable shipping space.
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