New fish!

I have new fish! I bought 4 guppies and 1 suckerfish from Tiong Bahru, but only 3 guppies and no suckers made it alive to my office fish tank. I desperately needed a suckerfish (for non-fish keepers, a suckerfish is equivalent to a self-running energy-saving vacuum cleaner) and so I got one at AMK for a dollar.


(Argh! I spelt transparent wrong!)

I'm keeping the white albino catfish for a friend who has gone away to Australia to work. I don't usually like catfish, but this one is alright - it minds its own business and keeps its nose on the ground. It isn't very big either, so that's a plus point. My friend who owns it is a vet and Mr. Catfish is one of ten dependents she is leaving behind in Singapore. The coolest of her dependents is a schnauzer nicknamed sexy tail.

The three guppies are gorgeous. I don't know how long they will last though. At most three months I say, and if so, I'm lucky already. These beautiful things have a knack of going belly-up at the slightest provocation.

I have one orange transparent goldfish-like-but-not-goldfish fish. This little fella has a swim bladder problem. He can't swim straight. Swim bladders are the most amazing organ in a fish. It keeps a fish bouyant, and in some species, it acts as a sound producer and receptor used in courtship! Read this short snippet for more info.

I also have two white transparent fish, and three orange fish. The white transparent ones were a little daft in the first month - they didn't know how to swim to the surface to get food. I was worried that they would starve. But they got the hang of it eventually. At least one of them. The other is perenially shy. Haven't seen him in ages, hope he is still around somewhere.

And of course I have innumerable neon tetras. They are the hardiest pretty fish you can get for your money. And with the perfect temperment too, unlike my all-time favourite twerpfish, R.I.P.