Tricolor ranchu (metallic scale) has always been my aim. When the tricolor (or panda) ranchu with metallic scale appeared several years ago from Thailand, I immediately thought of creating its ranchu version. I did not realize how hard it would be.

Up to now, I have crossed the tricolor oranda with ranchu three times. Each time, I followed the project up to the 2nd generation. When there was no sign of success, I repeated the same crossing again and again, for I could think of no other way to achieve the result. Of course, I used different fishes, and sometimes I used the result from previous failed attempts. It has been roughly three years now with no apparent success.

However, the latest result seems to rekindle my broken spirit. When the previous failed attempts only yielded orange or wild color, the current results show a more stubborn black color. One particular fish even gains back its black pigment after losing it – a process I frequently witness in tricolor goldfish. I call the process as a re-melanization process.

This is the piece (male) that undergoes the remelanization process:

And this one is his sibling (male) but does not undergo the remelanization process. Yet, his black pigment has stayed this way for a longer time. A common fish under demelanization process will lose that black pigment sooner.

I put a lot of expectation on these two guys. I have mated them with a tricolor oranda. Now the offspring are 2 cm in length and are still wild color. I think some of them will become tricolor fish. Yet, most of them generate fully normal dorsal fins. That is the problem with crossing back to oranda.

The only female from the same batch is this one:

The black color of this female is not as dark as the males. And the demelanization process looks similar to the common fish. If I have high confidence for the males to be tricolor, I do not have that much confidence for this female. Yet, mating this female with the two male fish is an option. (The female has not laid eggs yet).

Those three are from the same parents and same batch.

There are two more female fish I kept from previous failed attempts as reserve:

I think I can get rid of the yellow one. The wild colored one might be an option to mate with the two male fish. Who knows the wild color is a better choice than the blackgold one?

That’s all my update on the tricolor ranchu project right now. Wish me the best 🙏