While waiting for my ranchu offspring to grow, I manage to assess the current state of my oranda projects. First, I unexpectedly found two beautiful redwhite oranda as side results of my breeding program. When I crossbred my oranda to create the blue, brown, and purple color, I also got grey fish as the side result. I usually cull them out. But sometimes I saw some with interesting quality. I was tempted to keep them without bothering to keep track of their lineage. Some of them stayed grey, some turned into red or redwhite fish. I located these two beautiful oranda among them. Both of them are female. If only I had their male sibling, I might be able to establish them as a solid lineage.

These two fish have almost identical body shape, but one is a bit larger then the other one. The smaller one has single anal fin. So, I put a lot of hope in the larger one as my alpha female this year. Although I do not know her parents, I can make a guess. Their body shape reminds me of Helen – my alpha female last year. So, I give this new female the name: Helen2 – a very unimaginative name, for sure 😂

I only take picture of Helen2. This is her:

And yes, Helen is a big young fish!

For her video, I have uploaded it in my youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KccfPVWNm88

And this is Helen, her mother. Do you see any resemblance?

I value Helen2 in terms of its strong body shape. It has beautiful body depth (measured from top to bottom) which make her long body looks medium (or some might perceive it as short). It is a character I want to maintain. The stomach is beautifully round. The tail is of medium size, a bit smaller than her mother’s. The headgrowth is still minimal, yet it looks handsome. Well, I will still improve the headgrowth later on. But there is a great temptation to be satisfied with Helen2. Unfortunately, her color is more orange than red.

Definitely Helen is now my Basic Material. I realized how far I have gone away from my basic material of the previous year, but I am happy with that. To refresh our memory, these were my original basic materials:

Second, I need to select a male fish to cross with Helen. Which fish will be the best match?

Right now, my adult blue, brown, and purple oranda are way unsatisfactory. As a surprise, my yellow oranda grow into beautiful specimen. This is unexpected, since I though they need one or two more crossing to yield the desired result.

My yellow oranda has strong body, better headgrowth (than Helen2), and has uniformity. Well, actually, there are two types of body among my yellow line. I kept 6 fish, 3 males and 3 females. One type of the body looks like this:

This one is the largest female yellow oranda. The body is very compact and round. A bit short, yes. But it can grow into big fish without losing its swimming balance. I think I can accept this quality as satisfactory. There is no Helen’s blood in these yellow. I think the body and head shape is influenced by my tricolor goosehead oranda (now extinct from my collection, too bad). Three females and one male has this body type. I was waiting for the females to lay eggs right now.

Another type is like this:

Two males have this body type. This shape reminds us of my original Basic Material, don’t you think? This picture depicts the best male oranda I have right now. He is my alpha male. I think as the fish grow larger, this shape will hold the balance better than her sibling’s shape (the more compact one). So, yes, I use this male to be Helen2’s ultimate partner.

Helen2 has laid eggs several days ago. The hatching rate is less than 50%. But I am fine with that. It suits my capacity well. This cross will enable me to have my new line of Basic Material, and also my new line of Yellow Oranda.

Third, I also think about the improvement of Helen2 and this Yellow guy, especially in the headgrowth type. Last year I made a resolution to incorporate the goosehead type in my oranda lines. I have not change this commitment. But, perhaps, I was aiming at a more decent size of the goosehead type of headgrowth, not the excessive one as those of the redcap oranda.

Yet, in order to do that, I need to use the redcap oranda. So, two weeks ago, I bought some. Here are two of them (male and female):

They are small fish with weak body (short and thin). But their headgrowth is amazing.

I mated the male redcap with Helen2. My vision is to have Helen2’s body and tail shape with redcap’s headgrowth. But I am afraid that the offspring might have drawbacks in terms of body shape due to this cross. The eggs are ready to hatch tomorrow.

I also mated the yellow guy with the female redcap to improve my yellow oranda line’s headgrowth. Same concern about the potential drawbacks. The eggs will hatch in the next two days.

That’s all the update of my oranda projects for now. Wish me the best.