A long time ago, I heard – or maybe read – about yellow goldfish. Yellow is the color of the King, at least in the ancient China. So the King thought that yellow goldfish was a royal fish and prohibited common people to keep it. As an experimental breeder, it is one of my desire to see the fish, to own it, and to understand it. Nowadays, this color has been so rare, and one cannot find it in Indonesia.
During my travel to Japan two years ago, I saw the yellow goldfish in a fish shop. I was filled with joy! They were in the form of common goldfish. Nothing beautiful except the yellow color. Alas, it was impossible for me to bring any to my country due to the government regulation. I took some quick picture of them in haste, and that was all my encounter with real yellow goldfish.
As a breeder, I sometimes am amazed with how a certain desire suddenly comes true out of the blue. I am blessed, that’s what I think. As you may know, I am working on a weird project of wowkin. Yes, I know it is weird. It is a cross between wakin and tosakin. Both are red fishes. You can imagine how surprised I am to find out that one of offspring turn out to be yellow! Not only yellow, but yellow with pattern – clearly defined high quality pattern! This is out of my mind. How can this happen? I have no idea.
The picture below shows two of the wowkin offspring from the same batch. The way I keep them is also the same. Same pond, same food, same environment. Same parent, of course. Even same birth date. But one turns intense red, and one keep on being yellow. If there is any reader here well versed with pigmentation or genetics, could you please stand up and give me explanation of what is going on here?
Is it worthwhile to bring yellow goldfish back to life in the market? I do not know. Red color is surely more widely accepted. Yellow might be accepted by few due to its rarity. But if it ceases to become rare, how would the market respond? Well, what do you think of yellow goldfish. Would you want to have one also?
hermantogoldfish 
Hi, you may have already read this, but I leave it her to you just in case: http://www.raingarden.us/color.htm
Thank you for the information. Raingarden is Steve, if I am not mistaken. An old friend of mine also 🙂
Lol, cool. By the way, I was wondering if you had the link to an article called more or less: The Heritage of Blue and Brown Color in Goldfish Carrasius Auratus? I had the link but I lost it long time ago.
It’s an article by Shishan C.Chen, you already know that though, I read you mencioned his experiment in one of your articles.
Yes I know the article. In fact, I have downloaded the article. If you wish to have that, send me your email address. But I will need time to find it among my files 🙂
Thanks man, my email is marcos.loayza@gmail.com
Hi Marcos, I have sent the article you requested. Please check.
Im curious Hermanto….I have always been interested in getting more yellow colours on to different varieties…yellow oranda etc(and not just patches but whole body colour!!)…I have a group of yellow comets and my first aim is to get yellow fantails.I have added some regular(gold/orange colour) nymphs(single tailed culls from fantails) to see if I can cross between the two and get the fantail genetics with yellow body colouring??..good idea??
Hi Brent, in my opinion, I will just cross the yellow comet with the gold/orange fantail directly. I see no reason to use the nymph shape when what you aim at is the fantail shape. Nymph means weaker fantail genetics inside, so you will do better to cross directly with fantail with no defect. I do not know yet whether the yellow color will occur in F1 or F2, since I am studying that now and have not made any conclusion. But in the initial stage what you might get at most is yellow color in semi fantail shape. From this, you can work on by crossing it again with fantail to strengthen the shape.
Just read this article, it’s very interesting! Here in the Netherlands I sometimes see yellow goldfish. I work at a pond/aquarium-store and the yellow goldfish often are on the orderlist of the fish-wholesale.
By the way, I would love to have a fancy goldfish with a yellow/white pattern!
I would love to create them! Too bad, yellow goldfish is super rare here.
Yes hermanto ! I think there is a place for the yellow…I have 3 yellow comets including one with the nice long finnage…these guys will be crossed with some fancy varieties most likely oranda…between you and me(and everybody reading!)I will try with blue oranda I think to see what magic this can create…and also with redcap..fingers crossed and always fun 🙂
Great! Do not forget to give us the update