Update result on Purple Oranda Project.

There was a big gamble in this project. I mated my previous line of purple oranda with my basic material. That’s it. Other plans did not work. So, if this single effort failed, I would lost my purple oranda line. Well, I did not worry so much about it since I could still revive the line using my blue and brown crossing all over again.

I waited the offspring of this semi oranda to mature. They grew very fast and big, a good sign of gene vitality. One of them is, you guess it, Helen! When the time came, I mated Helen with her own sibling. The setbacks come in the form of color instability. Most of them turn white. So frustrating!

I collected only four offspring with stable purple color. Two of them had slight defect which I did not want to use as the next parent, so a new friend from India adopted them. Now I am left with two purple oranda. For my purpose, it is enough.

Here they are:

The top fish is male, the bottom one is female. Obviously the male is far more beautiful than the female in terms of the body shape, dorsal, and tail. A friend asks if I infuse ryukin genetics to him. No. In fact, I do not have any ryukin project. I do not even have any ryukin for a long time. Then, how come I get that round body with hump? I do not know. None of his parents nor grandparents have that shape. I think that is the beauty of breeding. Sometimes we get surprises along the way.

Anyway, I am satisfied with the current result. Doesn’t mean that there is no more to improve. On the other hand, there are lots of them! First, comparing the two siblings, I know that there is no uniformity. That alone is something to work for. Second, the headgrowth is uniformly lacking. Third, concerning the body shape, of course the male is better. But I would like a slightly longer body. About the tail, well, If I can maintain the tail quality of the male fish, it will be superb. Perfect tail, in my opinion. The dorsal fin is an issue. Yes, the male has an outstandingly high dorsal fin. It is nice to see. Yet, it looks fragile. I will be satisfied with lower but strong dorsal fin.

Before I forget, let me repost my previous line of purple oranda. Don’t you think I have made lots of improvement?

For friends who are still confused about the difference between purple color and blue color, I take this picture:

The fish in front is the purple, or also called lavender. The one in the back is the blue, or also called platinum.

These last weeks I have started to move on with this projects:

1. I mated the male purple oranda with my brown oranda (which I will update shortly). The purpose is to prevent the purple genetics from being saturated. That is why I do not plan to inbreed these siblings (purple with purple).
2. I mated the male purple oranda with Helen. Yes, I do a backcrossing to his mother. And I will be very cautious to plan my next move. My purpose is to get stable purple color in the shape of Helen
3. In my previous post (#22) I mentioned a white oranda (blue oranda that lost its melanin) with a desirable body shape. I mated him with Helen. Since the mating is between a genetically blue fish and a semi purple fish, the offspring results in a certain percentage of purple color.

Those three moves have been done. In the coming months I will have three lines of purple oranda which will give me more freedom to do the next crossing or to choose which line is the best. My only worry is the stability of the purple color.

Well, let’s see. I will update the results perhaps in the next five or six months.