My new friends

Thanks to the inestimably handsome Mr. H and his charming and pretty girlfriend Miss K, the delightful Miss E and I received an aquarium as a wedding present. It is very small, but it demands fish! So on Friday after a week of preparation I finally stocked it with cute fish:
I have three of these, which I think are pygmy pufferfish. I had wanted to keep them in Australia but they were difficult to find, while here they are $4 each at an aquarium near the station. When not hiding under a rock, they hoon about like little helicopters:These puffers only grow up to 2.5 cm long, and are freshwater puffers - the last ones I had, many years ago, were saltwater. Distinguishing features of pufferfish (for those of you who have only ever encountered them during cruel bomb-making exeriments as children) are:

• they can swim backwards and straight up, which is why they seem like helicopters
• they nip other fishes fins
• they have independently mobile eyes, so the eyes do not have to always look in the same direction as each other

Two of these traits make pufferfish exceedingly cute, especially when they come propelloring up to the glass to watch you dubiously through their little goggly eyes. Very cute! Because of their fin-nipping trait I had to get another fish that doesn't have much in the way of fins: a kuhli loach, in fact. Every house should, in my opinion, have an aquarium and at least one pufferfish!