We bought Elephant Nose Fish on Tue - 17 Aug 10!

Dear All

We bought a pair of elephant nose fish on Tues! What made us buy them was because they look so unique. They have long snouts, look as if they are wearing a balletrina skirt and are so tiny.

They swim like dolphins in the water. I joked with the girls that we now have dolphins in the aquarium!

Then, later on, we found out that elephant nose fish is one of the most difficult fish to keep in the aquarium. The ones we have (about 1.5cm long) are just babies! They can grow to about 13 - 23cm. Next, they are difficult to feed. They have no scales and are very shy creatures, but very aggressive to their own kind. Guess what, they emit electric charges too! Cool right?

The guy at the fish shop got an electric shock when he was trying to catch the 2 largest elephant nose fish for us. He quickly got his arm out of the water and I got hit a little by the aquarium water on my pants as he flung his hand. He got an electric shock and wondered if the aquarium light was faulty or what. He doesn't know that they emit electrical charges.

They do that at their tail in order to find food, as they have bad eyesight. Just found out (as our fish looks a little pinkish at the head and paler in colour compared to the 1st day we bought them) that they are paler when they are stressed. If they are too stressed, they'll fall ill easily and get the dreaded disease ich which though there's treatment for it, most fish will die from it.

We recently bought another 3 goldfish to add to our current 4, and 1 of the new ones died of ich.

When we returned the Tiger Oscars (as we realised later that they can grow unless 1 foot long!) but kept the smallest one, that fellow also died a few days later.

Since the elephant nose fish is tiny and shy and darts fast, I will try to get a good snapshot of it and upload it on the blog.

Meantime, I'll upload a picture taken from the internet for you to see what it looks like.

Love

Theresa