The third tank was a bit of a strange shape, flat and wide, and it was empty except for a thick ice floe.

Zhang Zi'an squatted down and raised his eyes to look at the bottom of the ice floe, where the mystery was.

At first glance, the bottom of the ice floe seems to bloom with beautiful flowers, gently floating with the faint current, but the flowers are far from so slender, and even crystal like ice cubes under the shimmer of the ice, almost transparent.

There are only a few such "flowers", all of which are rooted in the ice without exception, making one wonder whether they are animals or plants.

On the German beach, when Zhang Zi'an put the mermaid into his mobile phone, a large number of strange creatures retreated from the beach like a low tide, and a thin piece of ice was also squirming slightly. When he turned the thin ice over with a twig, he found these strange creatures on the back of the thin ice.

He immediately recognized that it was the Ice Anemone, a new species discovered in Antarctica in 2010, with unknown numbers and unknown habits, and a whole body of mystery.

They were frightened and curled up tightly, less than three centimeters in length, but when they were brought back to the pet store and adapted to their new environment, their bodies stretched out about seven or eight centimeters, and more than 20 tentacles of different lengths bloomed like petals.

Fortunately, he didn't rush to break the thin ice with his hands, because the tentacles of sea anemones are generally poisonous, and the toxicity of this newly discovered sea anemone is unknown, and he doesn't want to test the poison himself.

Ice Sea Angels, Tiger Snails and Ice Anemones all need to be raised at low temperatures, and they can only be cooled down by this simple and crude method before the chiller arrives.

"Meow~It's so beautiful~" Xinghai stared at the ice anemone and said, "It's like a star." ”

In the dimly lit room, the faint light on the ice floes can barely illuminate the ice floe itself, and the sea water beneath the ice floes is a thick darkness, but in this darkness, these weak ice anemones shine like a cat's eye with a concentrated light effect, looking up like stars.

In fact, the sea water is not empty, there are some freshly hatched harvest shrimp floating in the water, as food for the ice anemones, fortunately they are not picky eaters like the ice sea angels.

Zhang Zi'an carefully observed their status, confirmed that everything was normal, and walked to the other reef tanks to inspect.

The reef tank is located under the other wall, because the water temperature of the reef tank is above 20 degrees, and the three fish tanks that are a few degrees above zero will affect each other.

Thanks to the high-end aquarium equipment, the corals are growing well and don't need to be too bothered.

Despite this, he still has to measure the water quality every day in case the water quality suddenly deteriorates, after all, equipment cannot completely replace people, and some indicators of water quality can only be measured manually.

He uses a test tube to take water samples from each tank and label them to prevent confusion, and later he tests the KH value in the bony tank, which is the concentration of bicarbonate ions, which is one of the biggest differences between artificial and natural seawater. The KH value of natural seawater is generally 7 to 8 dH, and the amount of water in the fish tank is limited, so it is necessary to maintain the KH value at 9 to 12 dH in order to avoid sudden and rapid deterioration of water quality and the death of bony corals.

Soft corals, on the other hand, need to prevent KH from rising.

When he took water samples from the reef tanks one by one, Xinghai also walked over, stared at the last reef tank and said, "Zi'an, there are beautiful mushrooms in the water." ”

Mushroom?

Zhang Zi'an was stunned, and said in his heart, how could there be a mushroom in the water, could it be that Richard was so idle that he took a mushroom in his mouth and threw it into the coral tank? If so, he had to beat out his!

The last reef tank was the same tank that kept the ugly coral, and although it grew day by day, it was still ugly.

Zhang Zi'an 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 grabbed a magnifying glass and looked at it again.

Despite the lack of light, through a magnifying glass, he could faintly see that the edges of the ugly coral were slightly white, as if a white circle had grown.

Is the coral sick?

Not really.

After a moment's thought, he adjusted the lighting settings, transforming the original white light into a dark blue light.

In an instant, a miracle happened!

This dull coral glows with a dreamy color combination, with a vivid blue color in the white circle, and a pale red tawny in the white circle, like a mushroom with a blue ring on a red background.

As the saying goes, since ancient times, red and blue have come out of CP.

The pale red and bright blue transform this ugly coral into the most striking star, and even a few other beautiful corals cannot hide its brilliance, even if it is placed among hundreds of corals, people will see it at a glance.

If the previous coral store owner saw this scene, he would definitely regret missing 100 million!

Zhang Zi'an stared at it dumbfounded, and a name and an anecdote suddenly came to mind.

This rare coral is called Mesophotic Leptoseris, and so far there is no Chinese corresponding name.

The corals first appeared in 2011 when they were mixed with a batch of live rock from Indonesia and sent to a tropical fish shop in California, USA, where they were discovered by the owner, very similarly.

It's not just this coral, but there are also some rare corals that have been found in this way – people have bought other common corals, and when they return home, they inspect them, only to find that mysterious stowaways have mixed in......

It has now become clear that the Indonesian coral farm, which is the source of coral specialty stores, probably not only sells farmed corals, but also quietly mines natural corals and mixes them for sale to increase production. Because of its small size and inconspicuousness, this coral was mined from the reef by fishermen along with other corals and packed and shipped to China.

The owner of the coral shop and the female customer are both veterans of the aquarium and have a lot of experience, but they lack some theoretical foundation to miss the opportunity.

While thinking of its name, Zhang Zi'an woke up like a dream, and immediately dimmed the lighting intensity of the light and lowered the water temperature by 1 degree. Because he remembers that this coral lives about 30 meters underwater, and the sunlight that can reach there is already very weak, it is a kind of shimmer coral, and the reason why it grows slowly is because the light he used to give was too strong, and the water temperature is a little high.

Some species of coral are only more beautiful when they are clustered into a community, and the same is true for this coral, which is sure to have a breathtaking beauty when it grows and reproduces into a single coral.

"Meow~Zi'an, what's the name of this coral?" Xinghai asked curiously.

"Well...... this one" Zhang Zi'an felt that the string of English names was long and tongue-twisting, anyway, this kind of coral has no Chinese name for the time being, so he simply said: "It's called Ugly Duckling Coral." ”

One day, the ugly duckling will grow into a white swan.