Friends in the countryside may be familiar with this very beautiful little fish below, but they may not be able to say its scientific name, this small fish is called pán ៓ pí.
In the rural ditches and ponds, this small fish is very common, with canned bottles, sieves, or fishing nets, which put some pasta or meat, can be caught or caught, in different regions, it has different names, square skin, rainbow fish, multicolored fish, small flower fish, small color fish, mirror fish, colored round children, etc., in the biological classification it is the carp family Carp subfamily (Trout subfamily) trout genus, China has 5 genera and 12 species. Because of its brilliant color and very beautiful appearance, this fish has been developed as an ornamental fish, and because this fish has a high medicinal value, it is often used as a medicinal material. Chinese medicine believes that its sex is flat, attributed to the lungs through the kidney meridians, and has the effect of tonifying qi and strengthening the spleen. It can replenish qi and strengthen the spleen, detoxify, and also has excellent effect on physical weakness and the treatment of acne poison.
The genus is a small fish, about 3 to 10 cm in total length, and more than 15 cm in some species, most of the males have colorful bodies, and the females are lighter in color. It is an omnivorous fish, the diet is mainly algae, like to eat diatoms and other algae, a small number of branches and copepods, but also eat aquatic grasses, higher plant leaves and some aquatic insects.
Most of them live in groups, widely distributed in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Europe, and are almost distributed in almost all provinces from south to north in China, they inhabit slow-moving or stationary waters, relying on freshwater river mussels to breed. Most species prefer to inhabit freshwater lakes and shallow river areas, a few species live in clear and rocky streams, and usually prefer to live in water with lush aquatic grass and gentle water flow.
The breeding method of the trout is very strange, but also shows the cleverness of this small fish, the mate of the trout will swim in pairs of male and female pairs, looking for the river mussel together, after finding it, it will open the mouth of the river mussel with a special action, and then the female trout will insert the spawning tube into the mussel's water tube, lay the oblong egg into the mussel's gill cavity, and then the male will ejaculate near the inlet of the mussel, when the mussel breathes, it will suck the nearby water flow of male sturgeon semen into the gill cavity, and the sperm eggs of the trout will be inseminated there. After that, the fertilized eggs move with the water to the gill flaps of the mussel, where they slowly develop, because there is a continuous flow of water in and out, oxygen is relatively sufficient, and the temperature change is small, so the hatching rate is very high. The hatched juveniles will live in the mussel for 3 to 4 weeks before leaving the mussel to live on their own.
Later, biologists found that when the trout was spawning, the river mussel would also scatter the fertilized eggs on the sturgeon, allowing him to take the eggs of the river mussel to other places and get more living space to expand. So, in fact, the salmon and the river mussel are also a symbiotic relationship.