Sunken-stomache Flag Fish

My LFS has some American flag fish, and I was hoping to purchase a few for garden detail. However...all but one of them had VERY sunken in stomaches, to the point where the entire fish looked "bowed".
They were picking at food, and the guy at the store said they always came in that way, but almost always recovered..but I dunno, they looked starved! They are cheap($3), so I may try some anyway, but figured I'd get your opinions first. I know...never buy a sick looking fish..but if this is all they ever get, (and I am simply not in a position due to erratic mail service, for mail order), what do I do? Is this at all a normal look for them?

No, it isn't normal.

If you want, buy them and try to help them recover. I would personally mail-order some. www.aquaculturestore.com and www.jonahsaquarium.com should have some. Accidents are rare, but they do happen, so I wouldn't avoid ordering something off the internet because of one accident. If you want to try to get them to recover, feed them frozen BW and plant matter.

I work at an LFS here in fredericksburg, and I have seen a number of flagfish shipments like that. These seem to usually be the larger fish looking skinny. The smaller fish tend to look better. However, recently some of the ones I have seen almost look like 'balloon' varieties...I don't think that's normal either, and personally I'm much rather buy a skinny one and nurse it back than buy inbred crap-fish.

No, it isn't normal.

If you want, buy them and try to help them recover. I would personally mail-order some. www.aquaculturestore.com and www.jonahsaquarium.com should have some. Accidents are rare, but they do happen, so I wouldn't avoid ordering something off the internet because of one accident. If you want to try to get them to recover, feed them frozen BW and plant matter.

I'd love to order, but due to the nature of where I live, having things dropped off simply is out of the question, and my exprience with live anything via the mail has been noteably less then stellar. In effect..I cannot commit to being able to pick up packages on a timely enough basis to warrent it(at best, I can commit to "maybe next week").
Thus, local procurement is the only option to me.
I have a tank that is stuffed with algae, both hair and bba, so food would not be an issue..but I don't wish to purchase diseased, or something that simply has no chance to recover.
I do agree on the balloon type..if they have been manipulated in any way, I want nothing to do with them.

If you could get a picture of just how starved these fish are, we could more easily tell you if they will recover. Just a suggestion.

There's balloon flagfish? Really I had no idea they existed. Oh great we got another new balloon fish. First mollies then kissing gourami, german rams, platies, recently swordtails on aquabid and now flagfish? I never seen balloon flagfish or on pictures of them.