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Well, today was the annual fish store field trip for my local fish club. We went to about 6 different stores up a few hours north. Well, what can I say. One of my favorite stores was selling Gold Nuggets for $13. They were really healthy looking, nice bellies, active, and about an inch and a half long. I haggled with the guy a little bit and ended up getting five for $10 each!
For those of you that have been on the board for a while, you know that I have been salivating over gold nuggets for about 3 years now but have not been able to find the right ones at the right price. But, here it is. I did not have a good identifier off hand, although I believe them to be L177. I know they're slow growers, but hopefully I'll get them to breed some day.
This store also had some $1 cardinal tetras. They were small, but they were also quite active and healthy, so I got 10 of those (I should have got more). They'll end up in my 125 gallon once they get a little bigger.
At one of the other stores, they also had some really gorgeous golden angels. I got two of them. One of them has some read stripes on its fin. Looks quite nice. They will also end up in my 125.
It was quite a day!

Do you have any pictures to share with us?

I will definitely get some pictures up soon. They all survived the night and are looking good! Anyone know where I can get that Larry Vires book that has breeding Gold Nuggets in them?

Its out on aquabid.

http://www.aquabid.com/cgi-bin/auction/ ... 1111715701

hi Ingo,
wot are you feeding them on? ive had one for about 18 month's now and he's grown a good 2" , if you can get hold of some branch's of a cherry tree, you will deffinatly see the benifit, the colour's, the growth, everything.

here's one for you


Kev

This Cat-fish of the month article has a good guide how to tell the different gold nuggets apart.

I think $10 (or even $13) is a pretty good price for those, at least compared to here in England, where they generally are around $30-$40 at that size.

Let us know how you get along.

My L177 has become more active lately, and I saw it eat for the first time on sunday (I'm quite convinced that it's been eating before, but I wasn't ENTIRELY sure, since it's still not quite used to it's new home and hides as soon as anyone walks close to the tank).

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Mats

Wow! Now that's a fish! It's not the same species as mine. Mine has larger spots.

Currently, I'm figuring out what they like the best. I've tried Hikari sinking carnivore pellets and sinking catfish pellets. I've also put in some frozen blood worms and will soon add some zucchini. There is a lot of driftwood in the tank as well. With the bloodworms, I put a cube in some water and let them break apart. Then, using a turkey baster I take them and put them at the bottom of the tank near where they like to hide. I've found they like the blood worms the best. Those are completely gone when I get up. With the other two pellets, there is usually some left in the morning. What foods have you been successful with?

Where do you go about getting some cherry wood? I live in California so I haven't seen any cherry trees lately.

They've really colored up quite a bit as compared with what they were in the store. Now I just need to remind myself to get some pictures!

I've fed mine with Hikari Algae wafers and they seem to go down a treat (they actually contain quite a lot of protein (34%), so they are pretty good for meat-eating plecos too). Not seen it near the zucchini that the clown pleco's eat the skin of. But I've only got one, and it's quite shy. I know it likes bloodworms, so does ALL of my other fish, including the Bristlenoses. It's a bit difficult to get the other fish to stay off the bloodworms, but if I feed just before lights out, I'm hoping that most of it goes to the pleco's.

Just keep trying different things. Let us know what you find...

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Mats

I gave them some zucchini tonight and when I looked at them with some nightvision, they were really active. Several were munching on the zucchini. I'll give the algae wafers a try. I hadn't heard that they liked that before.

They charge $79.99 per gold nugget here in Hawaii at the LFS since they are illegal to import. I dont know how they get them in, but they sell quick at that price. I really want some but im not about to pay Zebra pleco prices for them. So (Hint) if anyone was to accidentally shipped me a package of something that accidentally had about 6 of them in it that would be great!!

lrry93 wrote:They charge $79.99 per gold nugget here in Hawaii at the LFS since they are illegal to import. I dont know how they get them in, but they sell quick at that price. I really want some but im not about to pay Zebra pl*co prices for them. So (Hint) if anyone was to accidentally shipped me a package of something that accidentally had about 6 of them in it that would be great!!

I'm supprised that those are illegal there. If anything, I would think that the easily bred species such as bristlenose and commons would pose much more danger. Ae those illegal as well?

Common plecos are legal. They have two fresh water lakes here on Oahu and they are full of schools of Pleco. So much so they jam up fish finders. Ive never actually caught them to I.D. the species but they look common and average of 1' plus.

Hawaii has some really crazy laws when it comes to importing plants and animals. I have to pay the state $5.00 everytime I bring a fish in for a permit fee and then they meet it at the airport to inspect it. If everything doesnt check out the animal is destroyed. If I was to try to make it legal for Gold Nuggets to come in I would have to go before review boards and it would take months or years to get it done. There is very few fancy plecos that are legal to come in here.

That's too bad. They sure are amazing animals. I find myself just staring at the tank. But, you never know. Get enough people together and try and get them legalized!