This month’s update covers both August and September, since we aren’t able to do as much during the restrictions in Melbourne right now. I will include some hobby related tidbits, though there’s not much news for the store itself! Hopefully more things will change in mid-late October with the possibility of Stage 3 of reopening Melbourne.

Firstly let’s see where we are standing for event related impacts to services at Sans Vertigo…

COVID-19 Impacts

Stage 4 restrictions in Melbourne have decreased postage and logistics to 2/3rd their normal running capacity, and there has been a huge surge in deliveries needed. This means it’s going to take much longer for express service parcels to arrive- which is not safe for live goods such as plants, shrimp, fish and others. 

For the safety of our animals, we can only send dry goods until express services are no longer delayed. **

In the meantime you’ll notice that all of our livestock will remain out of stock until then. If you’d like to stay up to date for when we’re able to ship live goods again, follow our Facebook page for the latest news.

** We may send starter cultures upon request if you contact us. Please note that we can’t guarantee live arrival if we ship outside normal circumstances, such orders should only be made if you urgently need starter cultures. 

International shipping is still impacted for certain countries, generally it’s best to look through our Etsy because it has more comprehensive information on shipping. If you are unsure of shipping to your country, feel free to message us and we’ll look into it! 

Updated Shrimp Photos and Video

It’s time for our quarterly update of all the shrimp photos and videos on our store! Even though we can’t ship them until restrictions on retail and logistics workplaces ease up the shipping situation, having up to date photos of our shrimp colonies is still important. You’ll find all the listings of shrimp on our store have updated photos and videos on them. Here is also a nifty Youtube playlist of the videos for your enjoyment! 

Preserving Invertebrates

Over the past few weeks, aside from maintaining invertebrates and Sans Vertigo’s merch side, I’ve been practicing a bit of invertebrate taxidermy. Some invertebrates, namely the beetles and stick insects have lifespans of roughly a year and many of them have passed from old age. Instead of discarding them, I’ve been keeping them to practice taxidermy and as personal mementos. It’s a very easy process, though it is not for the squeamish when it comes to dealing with the innards of soft bodied inverts! 

Here’s a male spiny stick insect, my most recent pin.

Once these are fully dried, they’ll need to be stored in an airtight box with mothballs (naphthalene) to keep them from deteriorating and being eaten by pests. If you’d like to try this yourself, I recommend looking up videos and Youtube Channels such as insectsafari. 

Merch, merch, merch in progress

We’re upping our game from regular photo prints to archival fine art quality prints for future merch. These are the highest quality prints possible with color accuracy and longevity in mind. Here’s the preview of the artwork that is on the way. But like our charms and pins, it’s taking time to prepare due to the impacted shipping times- there are some components we ordered in May that never arrived! Once everything is ready, we’ll be dropping our merch on our social media pages. 

It’s been an unfortunately difficult year and much of the plans for Sans Vertigo had to be shelved. I’ll likely pick those extra projects up again next year if things improve. We have our fingers crossed for October!