Pet King

Subconsciously, everyone in the store turned to look at the door when they heard the knock.

What a coincidence––it was another person that they knew.

Electrician Wu stood by the door and stuck his head inside to take a look. There was another old man of a similar age who was on an electric bicycle waiting by the sidewalk.

“Wu, is this the place?” the latter asked, his voice loud and sonorous.

The outside was bright and the inside was dark, so Electrician Wu squinted his eyes and swept his gaze across the faces of the people. His gaze soon fell on Zhang Zian and he said with surprise, “Yi, it’s you?”

“Master Wu, you’re here! Quick, come in… is that your friend outside?” Zhang Zian walked over to welcome them in.

Electrician Wu hesitated for a moment before he nodded. “He’s also a retiree from our factory. His surname is Zhao and he’s a welder.”

Following after them, Electrician Wu waved his hands to the person outside. “Come in. Lock the bicycle well; don’t let it get stolen.”

Welder Zhao was a thin old man, his teeth were black and yellow from years of smoking, and he had a strong smell of smoke on him. He pushed open the door. The moment he entered, he started making a lot of noise. “This is the place? Wu, are you kidding me? Isn’t this a newly-opened store? The stuff isn’t even set up yet! Let’s go… let’s go look for an old store. I can’t trust a new store! It could close down in just a few days!”

After he said that, he went over to pull on Electrician Wu.

Electrician Wu was also hesitating, but Zhang Zian had helped him with his problem in the fish market, so he felt bad if he were to just take his leave.

“Master Zhao, right? I agree with whatever you say—but, my shop has been running on this street for more than ten years. It’s not a new shop!” Zhang Zian interrupted.

“Not a new shop?” Welder Zhao sneered. He pointed at the walls and the floor with his finger. “The smell of this new latex paint isn’t even gone yet. It hasn’t even been a month since he renovated this place, right? And you’re telling me it’s not a new shop?”

“Great observation! You can even notice all that! This shop is indeed new, but the shop beside it is also mine. It has been running on this street for ten over years. You can ask around if you don’t believe me.”

Zhang Zian was able to understand his thoughts on looking for an old shop. Even for the almighty Taobao, everyone would still look for the oldest shop with the highest sales so that they can be relieved. It was better to be ripped off with everyone than alone…

Welder Zhao walked out of the shop, suspicious. He came back moments later, nodded, and said, “Okay, I said the wrong thing.”

It was not okay to leave the pet shop alone with no one to look after it, so Zhang Zian sent Lu Yiyun back. He then asked, “Master Wu, are you here for the 24V heating rod?”

Electrician Wu nodded. His gaze uncontrollably drifted to the aquatic creatures that Zhang Zian had brought back.

“I will look at the heating rod, then also look at the fish,” he said.

Welder Zhao complained. “Wu, I’m telling you not to waste that money. Isn’t a twenty to thirty dollar heating rod just the same? A heating rod that costs a few hundred dollars can help you raise better fish? I don’t believe it!”

Electrician Wu waved his hands. “Zhao, stop trying to persuade me in this matter. I have made up my mind so you’re just wasting your breath—the problem isn’t with the fish, but the safety. You’re not an electrician, so you don’t understand how dangerous electricity can be.”

It seems like Welder Zhao had already persuaded him more than once before they came here, but Electrician Wu, who was determined to buy a safer heating rod, had turned down Welder Zhao’s advice.

“Look at you… the older you are, the more stubborn you get!” Welder Zhao pointed at him in frustration.

Wang Qian and Li Kun had a lot to say about Welder Zhao: “You’re not even part of Master Wu’s family; Did he eat your rice, or use your electricity?; Is there a need for you to care so much?; You persuaded him once and he didn’t listen, so forget it… Why are you insisting on your views?”

Before he had come into contact with high-end aquarium equipment, Zhang Zian, too, did not know how good a piece of high-end equipment could be. But after he got exposed to them, he understood that one got what they paid for. For a dollar, one could get a tier one piece of equipment, and with five dollars, they could get a tier two piece of equipment. But a tier two piece of equipment was of a much higher grade compared to the tier one piece of equipment, so they could only acknowledge the difference.

Zian brought over the German imported 24 volts heating rod for Electrician Wu. “Master Wu, you can take your time to look at it. You can also give it a test here, too.”

Electrician Wu said with a little embarrassment, “I’m not going to hide it from you, but I actually brought a multimeter along…”

Electrician Wu took out the multimeter from his satchel bag. He didn’t bring it along when he visited the fish market, but he had learned his lesson.

“It’s okay. Go ahead and test it out. Over there is the prepared artificial seawater; its conductivity should be about the same as natural seawater.” Zhang Zian pointed to a drain bucket placed in the corner. The artificial seawater was prepared by Wang Qian and Li Kun under his guidance. It was all for the aquarium tanks that were going to be set in place that day. Once they had been taught how to prepare the artificial seawater, they would be able to do it themselves the next time.

“Heh, artificial seawater,” Welder Zhao said disdainfully. “We’re just a few steps away from the sea, why even bother with artificial seawater? You’re just wasting more money.”

Zhang Zian retorted, “You can put it this way: because it’s inevitable for natural seawater near the shore to be polluted, especially in the vicinity of the city. If you’re just planning on raising beginner’s fish then it’s fine, but for fish of a higher grade, it’s much better if you can prepare artificial seawater for them. Otherwise, it’s going to hurt when one of them dies.”

Hearing Zian’s words, Electrician Wu was quite interested. He used to bring back natural seawater from the sea just to save money; however, he now felt that beginner fish were not able to satisfy him and he was actually planning on raising some high-end fish.

“How do you prepare artificial seawater?” he asked.

“The salinity of natural seawater is 34 percent to 35 percent, so you’ll have to prepare synthetic sea salt and fresh water, then buy an ordinary hydrometer and prepare it using the temperature-salinity-density table on the hydrometer,” Zhang Zian briefly explained. He then pointed to the buckets in the corner and emphasized, “But there are some things that you need to pay attention to. When preparing the artificial seawater, don’t use metal containers, iron, aluminum, or copper––none of those.”

“Because seawater is corrosive to metals?” Electrician Wu seemed to have understood something.

“That is one reason. The second is because a large number of metal ions will be released into the artificial seawater that you prepared when the metal is corroded, and the pollution of natural seawater may not even be as severe… Look, you can see that I’ve only used the cheapest plastic bucket from the supermarket.” Zhang Zian gestured.

Electrician Wu breathed in a cold breath. “If you didn’t mention anything about this, I might have really used the metal bucket I have at home to prepare the water since it’s sturdy after all…”

“Do you have synthetic salt on sale here? How much is it?” Electrician Wu asked with much interest.

Zhang Zian answered, “We have both high-grade and low-grade ones, so it depends on which one you want.”

“What’s the difference between the high and low-grade?” Electrician Wu asked again.

Zhang Zian brought the two bags of sea salt for him to compare. “The main components of sea salt are sodium chloride, magnesium sulfate, and potassium chloride. All these account for 90 percent of it. The remaining ten percent are trace elements. The difference between the high and low grades is here: the low-grade sea salt contains more than 20 kinds of trace elements, but there are more than 40 kinds in the high-grade. If you’re only raising fish, you can just buy the low-grade ones; there is no need to waste money. But if you’re also raising corals and anemones, then without enough trace elements, their colors would not be as vibrant.”

Wang Qian, Li Kun, and Jiang Feifei were completely absorbed. They felt like they had gained a lot of knowledge.