Where to Buy???

Hello, I'm head over heels in love with veil-tailed goldfish. I dream of having a fish like the one in my avatar image. The trouble is that it seems finding ANYONE in the US who sells veiltails is like finding the needle in the proverbial 'haystack'. I've searched locally in the 3 different states I moved around between, I've searched online, and I even looked for them while on vacation to The Netherlands!! They had two marvelous and well-kept specimens... 7-inch with massive trailing fins!!...in a wonderful little store that was kinda like Fish-World-Meets-Lowe's.

I'd DIE if we had fish stores and supplies like what they have over there. It's almost sickening!! *pouts* I wanted to pack that store up and take it home with me!!

Anyways, back to the subject at-hand. I want a beautiful specimen of veiltailed goldfish, but I can never find anyone who sells them anywhere! I'm at my wit's end and I'd given up hope until I came here. Tell me someone can give me a useful link or two?

Jessu said:

Can your lfs order them for you?

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My LFS isn't the best in the world. I don't like her suppliers, especially for goldfish. Even then, she can get regular ryunkins, lion heads/ranchu, calico fant-tails, and commons. I've never seen any veils there... then again, I never bothered asking. Everytime I ask her about a type of fish, she usually doesn't have it in her catalogue and she refuses to look beyond that one fish supplier. : /

aquabid or liveraqura perhaps??

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Aquabid only ever has ranchu goldfish or koi. Same with eBay. I swear, finding true veil-tail goldfish must be literally like finding gold in the US... O__o;;

I appreciate the help, but those are fan-tails. There is a huge difference between the finnage of fan-tail goldfish and the finnage of veil-tail goldfish. It becomes more noticeable as the fish get larger and older.

Examples:

Mature Fan-Tail: http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/images/fish/Image12.sized-thumb.jpg

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...re+fantail+goldfish&gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=en&sa=G

Further photos of mature fan-tails.

Mature Veil-Tail: http://www.allcreaturesnews.com/library/romulus/rom1.jpg

That one is a male veiltail, 13 years old!!!!

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...=veil-tail+goldfish&gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=en&sa=G

Further veil-tail images.

As you can see, veil-tail finnage is much longer, not only in the tail fins, but also in the dorsal, pectoral and ventral fins as well. Some Fan-tails exhibit very long tail fins, but it's not the same thing.

I'm dumbfounded... how can a type of goldfish exist for centuries and not be available anywhere now? Is it endangered or something??

I'm totally lost on this one. I know people have them...

UPDATE:

Just looked this one up. How ironic that we created this strain of goldfish, only to nearly have it wiped out in our country!!

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...s?q=veiltail+ryukin&gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=en&sa=G

So the Philadelphia Veil-Tail is in a come-back stage here in the US (listed 'Rare' here), and so European fisheries (listed as 'Common' or 'Uncommon' in most countries there) are sending stock over to cross-breed with the remaining strains here, along with other goldfish types (telescope-eye, ryukin, and oranda) to try and bring them back even hardier than before here in the States.

Well, at least I have an answer for my confusion. Guess I'll have to import!!!

I'm not so easily daunted!!