My 1995 Small Farm.

Chapter 730 Little Surprises and Little Troubles

As it turns out, nature is far more wondrous than people imagine.

Mosses are terrestrial plants with a very strong vitality, but getting them to grow in water is certainly not an easy task.

Chen Ling used spiritual water to stimulate the birth and soak the baby, which was perfectly fine.

However, a tank will not only have moss as a decoration, but also other aquatic plants.

Aquatic plants are extremely good at absorbing nutrients; once they adapt to their environment, they grow exceptionally rapidly.

If the moss doesn't have much space to survive, and the aquatic plants crowd and cover it up, you won't be able to see any moss in the tank, which defeats the purpose of moss aquascaping.

In addition, moss requires both nutrients and fresh water after it transitions to water, making it a relatively difficult plant to care for.

It's better to just play with moss jars and moss bottles.

It's small, but it's quite pleasing to the eye when placed on a table.

Therefore, Chen Ling's previous attempt to work with moss was ultimately unsuccessful.

Of course, it's also because he had too many things to play with, and without focusing on trying them out a few more times, he just tossed them aside and never paid attention to them again.

Unexpectedly, the young apprentice accidentally discovered a simple method to successfully convert moss into water.

This method is anything but simple.

It can only be described as a case of 'borrowing'.

These are mosses growing well that have been soaked in water near streams and rivers. This is equivalent to wild mosses completing their transformation into water under natural conditions.

Shen Jiayi secretly tried it, and the animals she brought back thrived.

Of course, to cultivate this well, one must respect the growth habits of the moss.

In other words, after harvesting, it should be placed in a dark corner with little light. Otherwise, just like before the water was turned into a new environment, strong light will cause it to grow very slowly and turn yellow quickly, making it look unattractive.

It can be said that it transformed from a small, shady plant into a small, shady aquatic plant.

"No wonder Jiajia put all these bottles in this corner, and even put them behind the flower pots."

Chen Ling muttered to himself, but a smile remained on his face.

His little apprentice really gave him a big surprise this time.

It also made his mind start working.

Since the moss can be 'established' in the wild, we can collect it and grow it ourselves.

So, the same method can be used to throw medical maggots into the cave, such as that desert area where there is nothing, to keep some flies out there.

They give them nothing else, just plant some flowers and grass and force them to collect pollen to survive.

A number of people who can't adapt will definitely die in the process.

But as long as some adapt and reproduce, the second generation can be considered to have been initially 'established'.

A mutated honey-collecting fly has emerged.

However, this honey-collecting fly still needs to undergo further genetic purification and mutation...

As Chen Ling pondered, his thoughts began to wander.

The more I think about it, the more feasible this idea seems.

Chen Ling picked up the umbrella and strode out. He turned onto the mountain behind the house and entered the cave.

Flies are hard to find this time of year.

After entering the cave, Chen Ling was not in a hurry to do anything else, but instead came to the newly opened desert area.

A 'test field' was designated.

It gave rise to a large area of ​​flowers and plants.

When the weather clears up, go check Wang Lixian's greenhouse to see if there are any flies.

He remembered that last year, whenever the sun was shining and Wang Lixian pulled up the straw mat drying shed, a layer of flies would fall on the plastic sheet inside the shed.

I don't know if it will still be available this year.

"Now that the flowers are planted, let's go check on the fish. Besides, it's been a long time since we've had any of the spirit fish from the cave."

Chen Ling glanced at the flower field on the edge of the desert, then quickly moved to the lakeside.

As luck would have it, just as he arrived, a huge, dark shadow in the lake was startled by his sudden appearance, jerked violently, and splashed a huge whirlpool on the surface of the water.

Chen Ling also got splashed with water.

He wiped his face, a smug look on his face. "You think you can run away after circling around in front of me? You think you can?"

With a simple wave of his hand, the enormous black shadow appeared on the water's surface.

Its body is smooth and hard, without scales, and gray all over. At first glance, you might mistake it for a shark.

These are naturally the sturgeon that Chen Ling released.

"Sure enough, when I grew up, I looked a lot like the water monster in the reservoir."

Chen Ling made the large sturgeon float to the surface. The sturgeon, which was about 1.5 meters long and plump, had fear and terror in its eyes, but it couldn't break free.

However, just by looking at its appearance, it already has the imposing presence of a giant creature in the water.

“You’re already two meters tall. We can’t let you grow any longer. It’s time for you guys to be served.”

Chen Ling gently stroked the sturgeon's body and smiled warmly.

Although it's okay for the sturgeon to grow a little bigger when they're released into the cave, Chen Ling still doesn't want them to grow too large.

The main problem is that this thing is too harmful to small fish, shrimp, and fish fry.

Sturgeon may look like a big, intimidating creature, but their diet actually consists of benthic animals, such as small fish and shrimp.

It's not that just because someone is big and has a big appetite, they can catch big fish to eat.

However, as they grow larger, the fish and shrimp in the cave reproduce so quickly that they can't keep up with the demand and will soon be completely devoured.

"The water area inside the cave is a bit small. We'll expand it next year. Although the cave is magical and I don't need to worry about circulation, if I want to raise the fish to my satisfaction, one big lake isn't enough. We need to create a river system and make the water circulate as much as possible."

Chen Ling thought to himself, and then tested the weight of the sturgeon in front of him.

He is about 1.5 meters tall and weighs around 120 kilograms. His figure is neither fat nor thin, and is considered quite well-proportioned.

"Tsk, it's still a bit too thin. If I could raise a koi to this size, it would probably weigh over 200 pounds."

Carp in wild rivers can grow to over a meter long and weigh over a hundred pounds.

Not to mention domesticated koi, which easily surpass this number.

Thinking of koi, Chen Ling wanted to go to the lotus pond to see how the ornamental fish he had put in were doing.

He waved to the sturgeon, which had already been identified as food, and let it float over to the thatched hut.

He slowly walked to the stone bridge and bent down to observe the fish in the lotus pond.

To be honest, Chen Ling hadn't looked closely at the fish he had released for more than half a year.

When I came over and saw it, I was shocked.

Below the stone bridge, on the clear water, schools of colorful fish swam and floated, large and small fish densely packed together, as if covering the entire surface of the water.

No matter which direction you look, all you see are fish, all kinds of fish, big and small fish.

Some of the small fish are only half a finger long, but their bodies are already colored. They swim in groups behind the big fish, creating a spectacular scene.

Chen Ling stared in disbelief: "Holy crap, you've turned this perfectly beautiful lotus pond into a fishpond."

With such a large number of fish, there's no point in talking about watching them.

Upon seeing this, Chen Ling felt nothing more than a desire to feed pigs.

He endured the dizziness, took a closer look, waved to get a bucket, filled it with a few fish, and checked their quality. Fortunately, it was just that the quantity was excessive; the quality was still excellent.

"Luckily, it's still early, otherwise I would have let it degenerate and revert to its ancestral form as a wild fish, which would have been a waste of such a good resource."

The pure wild environment was left unattended for a long time.

Ornamental fish will gradually degenerate. After three generations of breeding in the wild, they will degenerate into wild fish, like a perfectly good goldfish that eventually becomes a crucian carp.

Although the cave has a beautiful environment, it is also a very pure wild environment.

Although the cave is magical, it's impossible to say that there's no risk of degeneration when so many kinds of fish are mixed together and constantly interbreeding.

"We need to expand our outbound operations a bit more next year; this quantity is too large."

Chen Ling frowned: "There are so many letters now asking for puppies. It would be great if they all came to buy fish instead."

Unfortunately, for most people, spending a few hundred or a few thousand yuan on a dog is fine, but they can't bring themselves to spend that much on a fish.

"Sigh, even if you add fish to an animated film, I doubt many people will be willing to buy it."

"Now that arowanas are becoming increasingly popular, I should raise my arowanas and then ask Lao Du and the others to take advantage of the arowana craze to sell some of them."

"..."

Chen Ling pondered for a moment, then strolled around the stone bridge and lotus pond. In the small garden next to the stone pavilion, bees were still busily flying in and out.

Chen Ling discovered that a nest of poisonous bees had mutated in a crack in the rocks in the corner.

He hasn't figured out how to use the poisonous bee yet.

He couldn't distinguish between strong and weak toxicity.

The only thing I can think of right now is using it to make medicinal liquor.

He did a quick clean-up of the garden, letting the messy fallen leaves decompose as soon as possible, and removing some of the tangled branches and leaves that were blocking the path, making the garden clean and tidy again.

So they returned to the thatched hut.

Just as he was about to take the sturgeon out to kill it, Chen Ling suddenly discovered that a new species of fish had also appeared in the ditches around the thatched hut.

Besides the red eels, there were also several white catfish and golden catfish.

To be honest, catfish and loach are prone to mutations, mainly because they eat almost anything.

Eating too much dirty food can easily lead to mutations.

However, the catfish here in Chenling are mainly mountain catfish, which are slightly more visually appealing than the catfish in the river ditches.

Some shrimp change color; river shrimp can turn red or dark black.

Some crayfish even turn golden-red or bluish-green.

"After seeing so many fish, I still think the mutated shrimp are the most attractive."

Chen Ling was delighted at the sight of the prey. He squatted down by the ditch and scooped out a few crayfish. Their shells turned blue and even had tiny specks on them, giving them a dreamlike quality.

"Goodness, you've done a beautiful job. How could I bear to eat you now?"

Several small red and white grass shrimp were scooped up. The red and white segments were very beautiful and looked even more beautiful and pleasing to the eye than some ornamental fish.

"Good, good, it seems that expanding the water area is imperative. We don't need to wait until next year. I'll start as soon as the greenhouse is finished. It just so happens that we don't know how to transform such a large desert area. Let's take the location now and transform it into a river."

With motivation, Chen Ling became more energetic. The joy of breeding comes not only from the satisfaction of increasing the number of offspring, but also from the delight of cultivating new varieties.

Even the minor annoyance of the excessive number of ornamental fish in the cave is insignificant.

We could easily build a river just to raise them, as long as they behave well and continue to mutate steadily.