the story started with a moss ball with pretty coloured stones in a glass jar. "so cute!" i exclaimed and i became the designated maintenance agent. she was called jane, and sits with my air plants peter and john near the window.
i have plenty of sunlight, so algae started growing. one day, someone said "you should get a sucker fish to clean the algae". another fine day, i was at bishan park office and saw someone's extra oto/catfish neglected in a small container, so i adopted it! it looked like a huge ikan bilis. that was the first time i ever kept any swimming creatures. after much googling, i realize that my habitat is not good for it as that fish is very shy and prefers lots of corners to hide in. there was nowhere to hide behind the moss ball. so i stuck in some money plant to create some hiding places. after a while, there was not much algae to eat, so i started feeding it microwaved cucumber :)
however, one day, i saw it near the surface of the water - it was panting quite badly and looked like it was struggling. i was afraid it did not have enough oxygen as my jar did not have an air pump, so i quickly told jilun and kun han my fish buddies and evacuated it to their tank. they were more than happy to receive it as they tanks were in need of major cleaning. in exchange for the oto fish they offered me a fighting fish which would be able to tolerate my small jar with no air pump. they accidentally caught 2 of the fishes in the net so they gave me 2 fighting fishes, but the big one started bullying the small one round and round in the jar. so i caught the big one and punished it in a small tupperware and returned it to the owner, leaving me with the smaller one with tattered fins after much bullying by all the other bigger fish. in no time, with no fish to bully, and with a pretty jane to accompany, his fins grew back into the nice and pretty purple which matches my african violet next to the jar :D (more about violet next time)
next i added a water plant. and once again algae started growing.
so i borrowed a snail from my friends. it was huge - as big as hamji (that striped thingie partially hidden by roots). it did a good job cleaning the jar, but i think hamji and the snail are not friends. during this period of time both of them took turns to evacuate the jar. hamji almost died after jumping out of the jar into the dustbin one night :/
i will continue the story in the next post. stay tuned! :D