We can always meet different people in different places. At different times, make different choices.
Born to be the king of all things, born strong and free to live. But some creatures are not lucky, they are not skilled enough, they are naturally angry.
Image source 丨Unsplash photography 丨soberanes
Garden eels belong to the same eel order as the eels you usually see, and are more distantly related to the blood of electric eels. Although their forms are slender and long, their living habits vary greatly. Not to mention that their living environment is different, there is a significant gap in their living habits alone.
Common eels like to live in clean water, and they are migratory fish, and the breeding season will spawn in the sea and grow in the river; the garden eel is an authentic marine fish, most of the body is in the sand, will not migrate, will not choose a place with clear water quality to live, as long as the bottom sand is thick enough, the water is muddy and it is like that.
Image source 丨 Pinterest
The garden eel comes from its habits.
This peculiar little fish often buries its lower body in sand, exposing only its upper body to peck at plankton in the water layer. From a distance, its body sways gently with the flow of the sea, similar to the grass in the garden that is blown by the wind, so everyone jokingly calls it a garden eel.
The garden eel has big cute eyes, but don't expect its eyesight to be good, this kind of elf that inhabits the seabed simply retains the cute characteristics, and usually feeds a little closer. Otherwise, according to its custom, it is extremely reluctant to expose its lower body to seek food.
Wild garden eels rarely leave the sandy ground, because there are a lot of plankton in the seawater, and as long as they open their mouths and shake their bodies in the sea, they can naturally eat food.
This method is much more comfortable than the feeding method of the trout, at least without having to pretend to be dead and deliberately seduce the prey over and over again.
Although it is a distant relative of the eel, the courage of the garden eel is not ordinary, it looks like a frightened gopher in the sand, retracting as soon as the wind blows, and then sticking out after a few seconds.
Its straight eyes are full of grievances, and its expression is as cute as a child who has been robbed of a lollipop. When you get closer to it, the garden eel retracts into the ground like a network delay.
Such a cute pet, if it has long been familiar to everyone, may be made into a game similar to "playing gopher" and swept the world.
Most of the time, the garden eel we see is only a small part of its body, the body hidden in the sand is not ordinary long, the length of the aquarium is about 40 cm or so, and the wild environment will be longer.
When you see the garden eel turning back and forth with its cute little head exposed, its body buried in the sand for more than thirty centimeters may be doing something else.
Therefore, if you want to start with garden eels, the space of the aquarium must be enough, and the bottom sand must be thick, the environment must be quiet, and it is best not to force it out to find food when feeding.
Density is also a key parameter. Although the garden eels in the ocean are always living in groups, they are also territorial, generally contradictory, will open their mouths to scold each other first, after the glue confrontation and intimidation can not solve the problem, is directly under the mouth.
However, their attacks are at best a showmanship and rarely cause substantial damage. Don't be surprised to see their exposed upper bodies entangled together, because the mating season is here and they're doing something shameful.
Garden eels are almost famous for their timidity, and there are many popular science posts that directly say that they "die when they are scared", but whether this is the case, I still want to be skeptical.
If this creature is really so fragile, even if God cares, it may not be able to survive in the cruel natural environment until now. And there are merchants selling garden eels online, if they are really scared to death, they must be careful during transportation to ensure that they can get to the buyer alive.
Aquarists who want to start a garden eel, it is best to go to the nearby aquarium market for consultation, and really can't find it to order on the e-commerce platform.
Its price is more than 50 yuan, not a few yuan as stated in some articles. At the same time, in the tank of garden eel, it is best not to have aggressive fish, lest it be bullied to the point of collapse.
The garden eel is not well known in China, but its appearance is really not low.
These little guys are often mixed in the major aquariums, and its bright body color, with its cute shape, is particularly attractive. Probably because of its timid nature and almost no threatening aggression, few people are willing to open a cylinder for it.