Jadeite and Silver fishes (Tinfoil Barbs)

One last entry to share with you before I head to bed. There are simply too many things to write about...

Jadeite

(And I tot it was Jade ITE, haha) Today Darling No 1 and I went to find out more about Jadeite. This mineral is not Jade as it is rarer, tougher with different color hues (whereas Jade has mainly green colors) - or so I gather from source.

We met Mr Jason and he was a kind old man who shared with us his valuable experience. He met us at Lot1 with his wife and 2 daughters. Leave me a comment if you want to find out more.

Tinfoil barbs

After the learning session, Darling No 1 wanted to get some goldfishes at this place. We took the free shuttle bus (interval of every 1hr or so) and reached our destination in exactly 15minutes as scheduled.

As I recall overhearing my dad's lament in the death of his last few goldfishes, I called him. He asked me to get 6 instead of more since 'it was terribly expensive' (he is a stingy old man at times. He told me he could have got the fishes for $2.50 instead of the $4 I paid for each fish).

After choosing 6 'red lion heads' for him (he is abit color blind sometimes) I got 4 similar ones for my Darling No 1. He was happy with those that I chose for him. We then got him a black one. He was satisfied with that too. I then went to select a pair of silver colored fishes for my golden based Luohan.

These silver colored fishes were nimble and I did not have a clue if they would survive any attacks by luohans or cichlids. It was just a gut feeling but I did checked with Darling No 1 for his opinion.

He just nodded his head and did not give me any more golden nuggets of wisdom (as usual).

Before the shuttle bus came, we noted that the 4 girls who boarded the 2pm shuttle bus with us were in the Fish Spa (read here on what is it). They shortly joined us at the open air lounge (haha, caught you) where we were already waiting for the shuttle bus to return to Choa Chu Kang Bus Interchange.

We also noticed a family who won quite a handful of the Disney toy souvenirs at the game machine. After the family left, one of the employee went to try his luck, but of course, he did not get anything! Haha! I should have given him this number 1800-6-668668 - source. 

Well I reached home and changed my fishtank water before I released the silver fishes to the tank. While I was drawing the water out from my tank, my dad wanted to remove one predator fish from his tank (for the 6 lionheads I got him) that were in the corridor. Round 20 minutes were spent catching this eluding fish. After placing it in its new home (my 4feet tank of course) it turned black. This is a typical stress symptom for cichlids. However before long it actually started to take nibbles of the my Golden Base Fader Luohan! I really got a kick out of this, seeing this tiny fish (7cm in length, including the tail) attacking my red fish which is triple or even 4 times large its size!

My Darling No 2 and Darling No 3 were busy running around me and checking on my movements (as the guard dogs they are).
I made them sit in front of the tank with me to admire the fishes too!

My red fish coolly took no notice of it. Haha. This is call 不自量力 or overestimating own strength or to go beyond one's depth.

The whole process to change the water took me 1hour but it was worth it as I did not want my silver fishes to be sick. Read here if you want to learn how to introduce fish to aquariums. 

After waiting 1 hour, it took another 15 minutes before my silvers were willing to explore out of the plastic bag they came from.

I was so enthusiastic and could hardly contain my excitement! But my mood was dampened when I saw the predator fish preying on one of my silvers. It was so heart wretching and I almost wanted to move the predator fish to a 3rd tank.(My house is not over-ran with aquariums, mind you. there are only 3 tanks) But this would impact on the 3rd tank. And my father almost wanted to throw away this fish. I did not want that and so decided to observe a little while more.

Another half an hour passed (by now it was already 7pm) and the pair of silvers were happily clearing the algaes between the decorative marbles. They were also chasing each other, with the predator fish at their tail! It was a sight to behold! 

Suddenly, the mood changed. Now all 3 fishes were playing and nibbling at each other. My small brother came and joined me to admire the fishes. We were laughing at how the fishes were playing with each other. I did some reading online and the google searches told me how hardy my silvers were.

Only after google persuaded me that these Tinfoil Barbs (view google pictures here) are sturdy, did I decide to let them remain in my 4feet thank.

And now the 3 smaller fishes (all were miraculously the same size of around 7cm in length) are a group, with my larger red luohan as the main focus point. 

One thing that jumped out at me, was that the left side of my red luohan appears a letter 'A'. So now I have Fish A, Fish B and my silvers in my 4feet tank.

Here are some pictures for you. But they may be abit out of focus.

*Lynspirations
I love fishes as they symbolizes freedom and independence