Arrival of the new Loaches

After taking a nap in the afternoon yesterday, I then decided to go down to Qian Hu by public transport. It took around 40 minutes to reach there and the place was pretty crowded with families.

Already familiar with the place, I started walking along the rows of fish tanks featuring all kinds of common aquatic fishes/crabs. Despite roughly knowing the location of the tank where I last bought the Dwarf Chain Loaches, I still took my time to browse through all the tanks along the way, enjoying the views.

After the walk, I went back to the Dwarf Chain Loach’s tank and saw around 10+ of them left in the tank; I was told there were around 30+ left when I called in the morning, and I was glad to have come down today. Otherwise there might be no more left by the time I drop by next week.

I then started fishing them up. As the tank consisted of another kind of fish (couldn’t remember what they were though), most of the time I ended up fishing the other species instead. After several tries, I managed to net up a total of 5 loaches, priced at S$3.00 each. I didn’t really get to see how they looked, but as I did not wish to disturb the fishes too much, I just proceeded to the staff for check-out.

When I reached home, I had the packet of fishes kept afloat in the Main Planted Tank, making sure that the lights were switched off first to minimise surprise to the fishes, both old and new.

As the journey back from Qian Hu took quite a while, I didn’t want the new loaches to get stucked in the plastic bag for too long (thus adding to their stress). I then poured the fishes into a small rectangle tank, planning to net them out one by one.

However, I changed my mind as they looked visibly stressed and I wouldn’t want to stress them further. Furthermore, the water in the bag was from a separate tank in Qian Hu, so it’s unlikely that it would contain bad bacteria etc. So in the end I just slowly submerged the tank into the Main Tank and allow the loaches to swim into their new home by themselves.

A few were still stressed in their new environment, and it will probably take a while till they are used to this safe and natural (since planted with many plants now) home of theirs.