Chapter 785: Ugly Duckling

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?

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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!

The last coral tank was the tank for the ugly coral. Although it was growing up with each passing day, it was still ugly.

Zhang Zian bent down and looked through the glass. There was no mushroom in the water, but the ugly coral seemed to have undergone some subtle changes.

He quickly took a magnifying glass and looked at it again. Despite the lack of light through the magnifying glass, he vaguely found that the edge of the ugly coral was slightly white, like it had grown a white circle around it.

Is the coral sick? Doesn’t look like it.

He gave it some thought and adjusted the light settings from the original white light to a faint blue light.

In that instant, a miracle appeared!

The faint-colored coral glowed with a dreamy combination of colors. The white circles shone a dazzling blue color, and the taupe in the white circle turned into a pale red, just like a mushroom with a red base and a blue ring.

It was like the saying from the ancient times: “A pair is born from the red and blue.”

The pale red and bright blue turned the originally ugly coral into the most striking star. Even with several other beautiful corals, they would not be able to cover its light. Even if it was placed among hundreds of corals, people would see it at a glance. If the boss of the coral specialty shop were to witness its transformation, he would definitely regret missing out on a million dollars!

Zhang Zian stared at it with a stunned look. He suddenly remembered a name and an anecdote in his mind. The rare coral was known as Mesophotic Leptoseris. Currently, it had no corresponding Chinese name.

The first appearance of this coral was in the year 2011. They were mixed in with a group of live rock produced in Indonesia and were sent to a tropical fish shop in California in the United States. It was then discovered by the owner through an accident––very similar to Zhang Zian’s situation.

There were also other rare corals that had been discovered in the same way—people had originally bought other common corals, and after going home, they inspected their purchase only to find that there were mysterious immigrants mixed in…

It was now clear that the Indonesian coral cultivation farm, which was the source that the coral store used, probably not only sold cultivated corals but also quietly mined natural corals to increase their production. Because of how small and inconspicuous the coral was, it was probably mined by the fishermen along with the other corals. Then they were all packed together and transported to China.

The boss of the coral specialty shop and the female customer were both aquatic hobbyist veterans; they also had a wealth of experience, but because they were missing some theoretical foundations, they had missed out on their opportunity.

At the same time of recalling its name, Zhang Zian seemed to have woken up from his dream. Immediately, he dimmed the lighting intensity and lowered the water temperature by one degree. He remembered that the coral survived about 30 meters deep underwater, and the sunlight that could shine there was already very weak. It was a kind of low-light coral, and the reason why it grew so slowly was that the light Zian had provided before was too strong and the water temperature was also somewhat high.

One tree did not make a forest, and some species of corals were more beautiful only when they were clustered into a community. The same was true for his new coral. When it grew into a coral community, it would be a breathtaking beauty.

“Meow. Zian, what’s the name of this coral?” Galaxy asked with curiosity.

“Well…” Zhang Zian felt that the English name was very long and quite a tongue-twister, and because it didn’t have a Chinese name yet, Zian just said, “It’s called the Ugly Duckling Coral.”

One day, the ugly duckling would grow up to be a white swan.