785 Ugly Duckling (1/2)
The shape of the third fish tank was a little special: It was flat and wide with nothing inside except for a thick ice floe.
Zhang Zian squatted down and looked up at the bottom of the ice floes; the secret was there.
The bottoms of the ice floes were like a beautiful flower, gently drifting along with the water's flow. But the flower was far from slender and under the illumination of the faint light on the surface of the ice, it became ice-like and crystal clear, almost transparent. There were only a few of such ”flowers,” and all of them were rooted in the ice, making one wonder if they were animals or plants.
On the beach in Germany, when Zhang Zian captured the mermaid with his phone, a large number of weird creatures retreated from the beach like low tide. There was also a layer of drift ice that slowly crept up. When he flipped the thin layer of ice over with a tree branch, he found the same strange creatures on the back of the thin ice.
Zian immediately recognized it. It was an Edwardsiella andrillae, a new species discovered in Antarctica in the year 2010. Its quantity was unknown, and its habits were unknown––everything about it was just an entire mystery.
They curled up immediately after receiving a shock. They were no longer 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 to around seven or eight centimeters, and over twenty different tentacles of different lengths bloomed like the petals of a flower.
Fortunately, Zian did not use his hands to flip the ice, because the tentacles of an anemone were generally poisonous. Since the toxicity of the newly discovered anemone was not known, he did not wish to test the poison with his own body.
Sea Angels, Sea Butterflies, and the Edwardsiella andrillae all required a low-temperature environment. So, before the chiller arrived, he could only use a simple and crude method to lower the temperature for them.
”Meow! So pretty,” Galaxy said as it stared at the Edwardsiella andrillae. ”Just like stars.”
In the dimly lit room, the faint light on the ice floes barely illuminated the ice floe itself. The seawater under the ice floes was just a stretch of darkness. However, in the darkness, the fragile Edwardsiella andrillae were shining like cat's eyes in the dark. Looking up at them was like looking at a star-filled sky.
Actually, it was not empty in the seawater; there were some freshly hatched brine shrimps floating in the water, which were meant to be food for the Edwardsiella andrillae. Fortunately, the Edwardsiella andrillae were not as picky as the Sea Angels were.
Zhang Zian carefully observed their condition. After he confirmed that everything was normal, he went over to the other coral tanks to continue with his inspection.
The coral tank was located under the other wall. Because the water temperature of the coral tank was above 20 degrees, when it was placed together with the three other fish tanks that were just above zero degrees, they would affect one another.
Thanks to the high-end aquarium equipment, the corals were growing well, and Zian did not have much to worry about. Despite that, he would still have to measure the water quality every day to prevent sudden deterioration. After all, the equipment was not able to completely replace humans, and some indicators of water quality could only be determined manually.
Zian used a test tube to take a sample of water from each coral tank and labeled them to prevent a mix-up. Later, he was also going to test the KH value in the hard coral tank, which was the concentration of bicarbonate ions, and also one of the greatest differences between natural seawater and artificial seawater. Natural seawater usually had a KH value of seven to eight dH, but the amount of water in the fish tank was limited, and in order to avoid the sudden deterioration of water quality that would cause the hard corals to perish, it was necessary to maintain the KH value at nine to twelve dH.
For soft corals, on the other hand, one needed to prevent an increase in the KH value.
When Zian took the water samples one by one, Galaxy came over. It stared at the last coral tank and said, ”Zian, there are beautiful mushrooms in the water.”
Mushrooms?
Zhang Zian was in a blur. He thought to himself, How could there be mushrooms in the water? Was Richard bored, so it threw a mushroom into the coral tank? If that's indeed the case, he would have to beat all the droppings out of it!