Wal-Mart rescue... $4 gold nuggets?

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missmary

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
May 27, 2008
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Boone, NC
I adamantly believe that Wal-Mart should not be allowed to sell fish (or anything else for that matter), but while shopping for a bike rack (which they ended up not having), something in one of their fish tanks caught my eye...

In a tank with some dwarf gouramis, I saw what I suspected to be a gold nugget pleco. Upon closer inspection, realized there were half a dozen of these in the tank and they looked quite different from the common plecos in one of the other tanks. I was tempted to buy all six as they were only $4 and some change each, but decided to only get the two that were greedily gorging themselves on fallen flakes at the bottom of the tank.

I don't have a picture at the moment and probably won't be able to post one for another day or two (I'm visiting family and my camera is back at my apartment), but they look very similar to the fish in the pic I've posted below (the only difference being that the edge of the dorsal and tail fins are more white than yellow, but that could be just because they're washed out from stress).

Catfis630.jpg


I'll try to update later with actual pics of the two little buggers :)
 
I would have bought them all, but the two that I got were the only lively looking ones. The others look as if they were only hours from death (the largest in the tank, easily twice the size of any of the others, was stuck against the filter intake gasping).

I've heard gold nuggets are more fragile than their common counterparts and figured that there was little to nothing I could do for the others... but that I could at least save the ones that still had a decent amount of life in them.

Even if they turn out not to be real gold plecs, they're pretty awesome looking!
 
Definitely a gold nugget, that's a steal.
 
Okay, I managed to get a few half-decent shots with my cell phone. Sorry about the graininess; my cell's camera is only 1 megapixel. Here they are :)

http://i43.tinypic.com/5l53df.jpg

http://i41.tinypic.com/2ciaahh.jpg

http://i40.tinypic.com/u518l.jpg

http://i44.tinypic.com/dmtjk0.jpg

http://i44.tinypic.com/2exairk.jpg

The 1st and 3rd pics were the best that I could get of their spots. In the 1st, 2nd, and 5th pictures, you can see the yellowish-white area on the edge of the tail I had mentioned. Hopefully it brightens up once they've settled in!
 
I would def try to get the others and nurse them back to life, at that price they are worth the try!
 
dogofwar;3124752; said:
Sorry to say they're not gold nuggets...

Are you quarantining them?



Yes, they're currently being quarantined in a 5g that I keep running to house feeder shrimp.

Not gold nuggets? I suppose it was too good to be true. What do you think they are?
 
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