The shape of the third fish tank was a bit special. It was flat and wide, and there was nothing inside except for the thick ice floes.
Zhang Zian squatted down and looked at the bottom of the ice floes. The mystery was there.
From a rough look, the bottom of the floating ice looked like a beautiful flower that had bloomed, gently drifting along with the weak water flow. However, the flower was far from that fine, to the extent where it was sparkling and translucent under the faint light of the ice surface, almost transparent.
There were only a few such "flowers," and all of them were rooted in the ice. It made people wonder if they were animals or plants.
On the German beach, after Zhang Zian put the mermaid into his phone, a large number of strange creatures retreated from the beach like a receding tide. Among them, there was a piece of thin ice that was also slightly wriggling. When he used a branch to flip the thin ice over, he found these strange creatures on the back of the thin ice.
He immediately recognized that it was an ice anemone, a new species discovered in Antarctica in 2010. Its number was unknown, its habits were unknown, and its whole body was a mystery.
After being shocked, they curled up tightly. Their length was less than three centimeters, but when they were brought back to the pet shop and adapted to the new environment, their bodies stretched about seven or eight centimeters, and more than twenty tentacles of different lengths bloomed like petals.
Fortunately, he didn't rashly use his hands to open the thin ice, because the tentacles of the sea anemone were generally poisonous, and the toxicity of this newly discovered sea anemone was also unknown. He didn't want to test the poison himself.
The sea angel, the tiger snail, and the ice anemone all needed to be raised at low temperatures. Before the water chiller arrived, he could only use this simple and crude method to cool them down.
"Meow, so beautiful," Xinghai said, staring at the ice anemone. "Like stars."
In the dim room, the faint light on the ice floes could barely illuminate the ice floes themselves. The seawater under the ice floes was thick and dark. However, in this darkness, the soft ice anemones were like cat's eyes that had the function of gathering light. Looking up, they were like stars.
In fact, the seawater was not empty. Some freshly hatched shrimps floated in the water as food for the ice anemones. Fortunately, they were not as picky as the sea angel.
Zhang Zian carefully observed their state, confirmed that everything was normal, and walked to the other coral tanks to inspect.
The coral tanks were located under the other wall. Because the water temperature of the coral tanks was above 20 degrees, they would affect each other when placed together with the three fish tanks that were a few degrees above zero.
Thanks to the high-end aquarium equipment, the corals were growing well and did not require much effort.
Even so, he still had to test the water quality every day in case the water quality suddenly deteriorated. After all, equipment could not completely replace people, and some indicators of water quality could only be determined manually.
He used a test tube to take a water sample from each coral tank and labeled it to prevent confusion. Later, he would test the KH value of the hard coral tank. This was the concentration of bicarbonate ions and one of the biggest differences between artificial seawater and natural seawater. The KH value of natural seawater was generally 7 to 8 dH, and the amount of water in the fish tank was limited. In order to prevent the sudden deterioration of the water quality and the death of the hard corals, it was necessary to maintain the KH value at 9 to 12 dH.
Soft corals, on the other hand, needed to prevent the KH value from rising.
When he was taking water samples from the coral tanks one by one, Xinghai walked over and stared at the last coral tank. "Zian, there are beautiful mushrooms in the water."
Mushrooms?
Zhang Zian was stunned. How could there be mushrooms in the water? Could it be that Richard was so bored that he threw a mushroom into the coral tank? If that was the case, he would beat the shit out of it!
The last coral tank was the one that kept the ugly coral. Although it was growing day by day, it was still very ugly.
Zhang Zian bent down and looked through the glass. There were no mushrooms in the water, but the ugly coral seemed to have undergone some subtle changes.
He quickly took a magnifying glass and looked again.
Although there was not enough light, through the magnifying glass, he vaguely found that the edge of the ugly coral was slightly white, as if it had grown a white circle.
Was the coral sick?
It didn't seem like it.
He thought for a while and adjusted the lighting settings, changing the original white light to a faint blue light.
In an instant, a miracle happened!
The dull coral glowed with a dreamy combination of colors. The white circle was a bright and dazzling blue, and the grayish-brown color inside the white circle turned into a light red, like a mushroom with a red base and a blue ring.
As the saying goes, since ancient times, red and blue make a couple.
The combination of light red and bright blue caused this originally ugly coral to transform into the most eye-catching star. Even the other beautiful corals could not cover its brilliance. Even if it was placed among hundreds of corals, people would still notice it at a glance.
If the previous owner of the coral store saw this scene, he would definitely regret missing out on 100 million!
Zhang Zian stared at it, dumbfounded. He suddenly remembered a name and an anecdote.
This rare coral was called Mesophotic Leptoseris. So far, there was no corresponding Chinese name for it.
This coral first appeared in 2011. It was mixed with a batch of live stones produced in Indonesia and sent to a tropical fish store in California. It was accidentally discovered by the store owner, and the situation was very similar to this time.
Not only this coral, but some other rare corals were also discovered in this way. People originally bought other common corals, but after going home and checking, they found that mysterious stowaways had mixed in …
It was now clear that the Indonesian coral farm, which was the source of the coral store, probably did not only sell cultivated corals, but also secretly mined natural corals and mixed them together to increase production. Because this coral was small and inconspicuous, fishermen mined it from the coral reef, packed it up, and shipped it to China.
The owner of the coral store and the female customer were both veterans in the aquarium industry. They had rich experience, but after all, they still lacked some theoretical knowledge, so they missed a good opportunity.
When he thought of its name, Zhang Zian seemed to wake up from a dream. He immediately dimmed the intensity of the lights and lowered the water temperature by one degree. Because he remembered that this coral lived about 30 meters underwater, the sunlight that could reach there was already very weak. It was a kind of shimmering coral. The reason why it grew so slowly was that the light he had given it before was too strong, and the water temperature was a little high.
A single tree does not make a forest. Some species of corals only looked more beautiful when they gathered together, and this coral was the same. When it grew and multiplied into a coral, it would definitely have a breathtaking beauty.
"Meow! Zian, what is this coral called?" Xinghai asked curiously.
"Well …" Zhang Zian felt that the English name was long and a mouthful. Anyway, this coral did not have a Chinese name, so he simply said, "It is called the Ugly Duckling Coral."
One day, the ugly duckling would grow into a white swan.
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