a store with ponds and ranchus

[andruboz]

i drove over to this place this morning [bout 20 miles from my house]

http://www.watergardengems.com

i was looking for some snails for my puffer. they have the big snails for $1.99, and no cheap nuisance pond snails. i may be able to buy some big ones and hope for offspring to feed to the puffer.

while i was walking around looking at fish i saw some calico ranchus that looked pretty good. i've never been a great fan of gold fish as they remind me of pot bellied pigs. but these ranchus look more like little swimming bulldogs. at 2.5-3.5" of body not counting tail, they have a nice solid appearance. will they stay that way or get potbellied like the others?

they were helpful on the phone but i didnt get many questions answered while walking the grounds. no big deal, i wasnt serious about buying anything today anyway.

all in all a pretty decent pond store.

[ChilDawg]

Some pretty expensive fish, but they are nice to look at...were any of the show koi like these ones (http://www.watergardengems.com/koi.html) on the premises?

[goldfish freak]

It is hard to say when it comes to ranchus or lionheads. They may or may not get "pot bellied". If you do decide to get this type of goldfish, your best bet is to get one as an adult that is sleek looking and not so round. Goldfish like any other fish change body shape little when they reach adulthood.Those 3 inchers are likely still juveniles, so have a fair bit of developing left to do.

[andruboz]

nobody showed me where the 3000 dollar fish were. wasnt anybody in the fish pavillion to tell me about it either. they probably have many more customers and customer service people running around on the weekends.

when it comes to koi, the ones i thought look pretty were probably the cheaper ones and the ones that didnt do much for me were probably the bigger money fish.
i liked one similar to this.
http://www.watergardengems.com/6asagi.jpg

and the have a big yellow one [not gold]that stands out.

they had 2 huge, maybe 30 foot diameter tanks with maybe
30 or 40 big fish in each. 2 footers i would guess. they also had 3 or 4 monster common plecos in each tank.

i'm just guessing but is the potbellied look from selective breeding fish with shorter backs? having to pack big fish intestines into a smaller package?

[ChilDawg]

They probably also ask for some sort of card or cash up front to see the $3K fish! :)