I'm in the valley. Armpit of california as we like to call it lol. The biggest city next to me is modesto and that's about an hour away! My town has a total of 2 stop lights...no joke there.
We have a pet extreme ( which is the one closest to me that carries common beginner fish but a good assortment of saltwater fish) and then an hour away in modesto is petco which doesn't have anything much different except a better selection of bettas. There is also a family owned store called Tropical Haven which is actually pretty good but they pick and choose the days they are open or closed so there is hardly ever set business hours. Ugh...just a bunch of hassle. I'm going to make ONE more trip to modesto to see if I have any luck finding what I want and if I dont...well I guess I'll be trying my luck at ordering online. Msjinkzd has some pretty cool stuff right now
I have an ex gf that lived in Escalon, she said it also only had 2 stop lights is that where you are? lol Anyway, I live in SoCal and there's a TON of good stores here. So maybe do a road trip and come down with a good sized cooler or 2. Either make them bag the fish with oxygen in LARGE bags (I work at a LFS called The Aquarium, nice chance for a plug lol and ocassionally we have customers come from far away and they request this or I suggest it if I they tell me they came from far.) or if it's going to be a weekend trip, come down on a friday, and spend the weekend scoping out all the stores, bring some round 32 or 50 gallon trash cans with you or you can even get a plastic barrel (something with a good top that can be sealed pretty well to keep water from sloshing around during your travel) and either bring a battery operated air pump with multiple airstone's or you can get an inverter for the car and plug in the air pump(s) If you're going the inverter method (which I suggest), you can even put in a cheaper In-tank filter such as the ones made by Fluval in addition to the airstones. This way, you can keep the trashcans/barrel (portable aquarium) in the hotel room and just go around collecting fish from different stores and bring them back to the room. I know it sounds expensive to do this, but we've got great selection of fish down here in our SoCal shops since we're so close to all the wholesalers. In fact we see all kinds of cool things go through our store from Featherfiin Rainbows, Galaxy Rasboras, Endlers, Kilifish, Bichirs to Snowball, Gold Nugget and other rare Pleco's. Right now, we even have freshwater Morey Eels in stock! I know it sounds expensive, but it would make a nice weekend getaway and if you have a friend who also is interested in fish, you guys can share the costs. There's a ton of motels around here that aren't that expensive, you don't have to stay at the Beverly Hilton or anything lol Plus if you stay at a cheap motel, that'll just mean more money to spend on fish! Send me a PM if you want to do something like this and I can furnish you some names with really good quality aquarium shops down here. I hope you have a big aquarium, because you're gonna go home with a lot of stuff lol
P.S. If you go the trashcan route, use a good silicone or epoxy to glue the lid onto the trashcan, then cut out a small square hole in the top, but leave one side of the square intact so it's like a flap, that way you can put the fish in through the hole. Bring some packing tape and tape up the seams to re-seal it for travel home.
