GDAS Auction Report

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coupedefleur

AC Members
Jul 25, 2006
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NW Ohio
I thought I’d write this up for those of you who have never attended a fish club auction. Maybe you’ll try to find the club nearest to you, or even start a club yourself!

GDAS is the Greater Detroit Aquarium Society, one of several general fish clubs in the area. There are also local killie and cichlid clubs in town.
http://greaterdetroitaquariumsociety.com/

One of the fun things about going to different auctions is that they often have different “personalities”. There will be a bunch of people who all like rare gouramis, dwarf cichlids, killifish, or something else unusual that you won’t see anywhere else. In this case, the presence of Jim Langhammer means that you will see rare livebearers aplenty!

I had packed up my fish the night before ( I was taking my swordtails and platies- talk about “Coals to Newcastle”! ) along with some fruitfly cultures, and arrived early enough to check in my stuff and take a look at the fish and plant bags before the auction started at 11:00. If you’re really interested in a particular bag of fish, you can note the bag number and listen for that number during the auction.

I saw a lot of fish that I was interested in, but didn’t bother writing anything down. At this particular auction there were lots of livebearers ( of course ) and also a very tempting selection of catfish. There were only a few killifish and anabantids, and some different tetras. There was a good selection of angelfish varieties and a few unusual SA and African cichlids, but not the oversupply of them you see at some auctions. When you get bags of 8 healthy beautiful fish that can barely get a $1 bid, you know there are too many of them!

The auction records were for a bag of 4 pair of Peacock Gudgeons- $45 and a pair of rare harlequin halfbeaks. The woman sitting next to me asked what would happen if she needed to take a break and the bag of fish she really wanted came up while she was out. I told her that if it wasn’t a fish I wanted to bid on, that I’d bid for her. She wanted the harlequin halfbeaks, so I asked her how high she’d go. “However much it takes!” she said. Luckily they didn’t come up while she was gone. She did get in a bidding war with someone else over that bag and ended up paying about $47 for them!

For catfish fans, there were two kinds of Aspidoras ( think of small stretch cories ), some C. pygmaeus, rabauti, a couple bags of sterbae (!), some violetta (which I had never seen), and some large and healthy paleatus and a few other selections. Lots of different ancistrus and a few of the very expensive plecos. Oh, and several bags of big happy Hoplo cats and a pair of “Oil Cats”. The Oil Cats spawn in a tube, and were cute with black spots.

I got two bags of Aspidoras fuscoguttatus (6 fish), and a trio of C “San Juan” bilineatus. I almost got a trio of sterbae for $14! My bid was at the “going… going…” stage when the auctioneer stopped and said “Hey, these are STERBAE!” and enough people woke up to continue the bidding out of my range. They did go for less that $20 for a bag of 3, which is still a pretty darn good price.

In the killie department, I got two pairs of Aplocheilus lineatus and a pair of chocolate australe. And a few plants I didn’t have before. I also picked up a couple pair of australe for a friend, and a bag of congo tetras for him as well.

Other unusual fish at the auction included some Badis burmanicus, Amica splendens, red head severums, and more types of wild livebearers than I can attempt to spell. One type of livebearer was about 3-1/2” long and looked like they could whip a cichlid in a fight! Blue flame tetras were also available. They spawn on a rock and the male fans the eggs- imagine that- tetras that act like cichlids. There was a strain of huge red tuxedo highfin swordtails the Jim Langhammer has been working on for decades. I wanted to get some of those, but they went way too high for me. Someone brought a truckfull of 12x12x48” tanks and they were selling them in lots of three.

This was only the second time I’ve taken anything to an auction to sell, and the first time I’ve taken fish. When my first bag of swordtails came up, the species reader said “Nice color on these, and nice extension!” that helped the trio sell for $10, which was very good considering the competition in livebearers. The other two trios sold for $10 and $5. When my blue and orange platy trios came up they said “Nice color, really neat-looking fish”, but they fetched $3, $2, and $2. Oh well- that’s probably more for a trio of platies than a store would have given me. I only took three bags of each type of fish because I didn’t want to overload the market.

The auction finally finished a little after 5, with hundreds of bags of fish and plants sold. Overall, a fun and interesting auction. One thing I didn't like- one of the sellers was "bagging" his fish in little plastic soft drink bottles. Some of the fish would have been a tight fit through the neck of the bottle. When the bottles were set upright the surface area was very small and there was often a dead fish in the bottle. I hope they ban this practice in the future.

This auction didn’t have a “bloodbath” at the end- there weren’t too many valuable fish going for a dollar a bag.
 
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