Helen was born at the beginning of this year. She is not one year old yet. Interestingly, she has become the primary female in my breeding project this year.
Close to the end of this year, there are three projects left for Helen before she retires:
- Deep red oranda project
- Basic Material Preservation project
- Purple Oranda project
In this essay, I will update the first project.
In my childhood, I had one occasion to keep a special red-white oranda. It was special because the red color was so intense. It was not orange nor deep orange. It was truly red. I have never seen such an oranda again ever since. If we examine Helen, she is an orange and white fish. In the world of goldfish, we call it red and white, since we believe the orange can be improved by giving her certain ingredients. But even with a good color enhancer diet, it is hard to improve Helen’s color in my city where the general climate is warm (tend to be hot). It is easier to achieve deep red coloration in the colder water. Anyway, I do not use color enhancer often. I use it mostly during the color mutation stages.
I felt lucky when one of my red-white butterfly goldfish offspring developed an intense red color. It was an anomaly in the batch. There was only one individual. I named him Beni. The red color is so striking even without color enhancer diet. I have used Beni to improve the color of my butterfly goldfish (it is under way). I have also mated Beni with my semi-tosakin goldfish with the long term purpose of creating tosakin with deep red coloration. And now, I am thinking of reviving my childhood special oranda!
So, I mated Beni with Helen at the end of last month.
Their feature differences are in the eyes, headgrowth, and tail shape. Adding color to the list, the project becomes a four-level difficulties. Well, the body shape is certainly different, but I think it will not contribute much to the difficulty. So, with this difficulty level, I do not think my special oranda will occur directly in the F1.
I predict I will get some intense red color offspring in F1, but not in the shape of a decent oranda. The protruding eyes are usually recessive to the normal eyes, so I expect normal eyes in the F1. I will also expect minimal or no headgrowth. From my experience, such a cross between a goldfish with headgrow and without headgrowth will result in no headgrowth in the initial stage. But as the fish gets older, it will develop small headgrowth. Let’s assume that I will get no headgrowth in the F1. The tail might not be as erect as I desire. The body shape might be so so. I will just pick the intense color ones to be the next parent fish.
At this stage I have two choices:
- I can cross F1 x F1
- I can cross F1 with another oranda
The first choice will strengthen the desired red color, but will let the improvement of oranda body conformation to chance. In fact, I might have some telescope eyes as the result of the recessive gene meeting. The headgrowth and tail might come variably, but might not even close to the desired standard. If this course is taken, the next step is to pick the F2 (already with deep red color) that resembles oranda as close as possible. From there, I can cross the F2 with another oranda.
The second choice will let me improve the body conformation to oranda standard. But, I do not know about the coloration. At this point, I need to admit that I do not know how the deep red color and the orange color will interact when they are mated. I know about yellow x orange, or blue x orange. They follow simple Mendellian rule. I also know about black x orange, which resulted in a spectrum between black and orange (namely: black, semi-black, grey, black-gold, and orange). But different crossing between black and orange can result in different color, though still within that spectrum. But I do not know what will I get if I cross deep red and orange. My guess is that it might behave similar to the black x orange. There might be a spectrum of color in the result (namely, orange, reddish orange, and intense red). But my F1 is not purely deep red since it is a cross between red and orange already. Will that mean my chance of getting intense red will be very slight in the F2 or even none? This course might give me a better oranda conformation but jeopardizing the intense red color.
Which course should I take?
Well, I still have half a year to come up with an answer. Plenty of time. But if you have any insight for me, please write a comment. I will be thankful.
hermantogoldfish 