Date: March 5, 2021

               My ranchu projects are not as well planned as the oranda projects. For several years I have worked with blue, brown, and purple ranchu. I develop them from scratch. I got my blue ranchu from the panda moor x ranchu. My brown ranchu came from chocolate pompom x ranchu. And my purple ranchu was a cross between the blue and the brown ranchu. It took years for me to get those colors into the decent ranchu shape. But until now, I have not had a clear vision of how to develop my line’s basic ranchu shape.

               The oranda projects consume a lot of my space. It is the fate of a city breeder like me to work with limited space. I must think of the management of my tubs in a daily basis: moving fishes around from tubs to tubs, maintaining a manageable hatching size, culling as early as possible in the strictest way I can. With this lack of vision and space in developing my ranchu line, I plan to reduce my activity in ranchu projects for now. I will only breed just to make sure they are not extinct from my collection. By doing this, I can save my space. The good thing is that I can always put ranchu in the same tubs / ponds with oranda without the risk of losing track of the lineage. I cannot do this for the hatches between semi brown, semi blue, semi purple, and semi yellow oranda. They all will mutate into the same color (namely red, red-white, or wild color). They must be kept in separate tubs to keep track of which one is which.

Hopefully later on I will be able to develop my own ranchu line’s shape. But for now, they are not my priority.

Actually, there were two main sub projects in my ranchu planning. They were the cow ranchu and the tricolor ranchu.

Last year I was resolved to breed the cow ranchu. I have acquired at least three different line associated with cow ranchu from China (one from De Quan farm, one from Pan Xi, and one from unknown). I even mixed them with my blue and purple metallic scale ranchu. Yet, the results are far from satisfying. I have bred them several times with similar results. Most of the offspring have no anal fins. The rest have horrible back shape. Sometimes I got only one or two decent shape from a batch. The surviving ones mostly become either calicos or casper (the full transparent white fish).

Right now, I revise my cow ranchu project. First, my aim is not to acquire cow ranchu offspring anymore. I revise my aim into producing my calico ranchu line instead of cow ranchu line. So, I will cross whatever transparent scale I have, be it cow ranchu, calico, or a mix with other ranchu type. I will not keep track of the lineage of the offspring anymore. And later on, I will see if there is a good body shape and color from my mix collection that I can develop into my own transparent scale ranchu line. Just surrender myself to the force of randomness. Second, I will sort of postpone this project for later. Right now, I will just breed them only when I have space and time, and to collect few decent fishes from each batch. I will raise them together with my oranda. So, this project will not occupy a lot of my space and energy for now. Hopefully I will have some beauties to work with later on.

It seems that in life, one must choose one’s priority. One cannot have everything, at least in the same time. So, I think I am correct in postponing the priority of my ranchu projects for now to concentrate on my oranda.

The second sub project was the tricolor metallic scale ranchu. I was trying to develop this kind of ranchu from my tricolor goosehead oranda. I have made several attempts for some generations, with no success. I think failure is part of a breeder’s life. But I am still trying and learning from my mistakes. I am still restarting again and again.

Right now, I have three batches of different cross between the tricolor oranda (and also her cross) and ranchu. I dedicated three large ponds for the offspring (roughly 10 weeks old now). They are space-consuming and this project is far from being successful. I am still watching how the offspring turn up (whether they will carry the tricolor genetics or not) and thinking of another way of doing this in case the current project fails.

This sub project of tricolor ranchu is so dear to me. I can postpone the blue, brown, purple, and cow ranchu projects, but not this one.