One of my side project is to create a celestial eye butterfly goldfish. The inspiration comes from an old internet picture displaying a twelve-red goldfish with short body-type, beautiful butterfly tail, and celestial eyes!

I have been breeding Butterfly Goldfish and Celestial Eyes for some years. Both were rare in my country at that time. When a certain seller imported the fishes, I quickly acquired them in order to preserve the gene in Indonesia. There are two types of popular Celestial Eyes nowadays. The first one is the old style that has slim long body and long tail. The second one has thicker long body, short tail, with pompom in its nostril. Mine is the second type.

At that time, I was thinking that keeping these two goldfish varieties was a tedious job for me. I had lots of other projects as my priority. But, I did not want to lose these unique gene. So, I thought that combining these two varieties was a good idea. I started this project in the beginning of this year, in the midst of my Oranda Projects.

I was very certain that I would get some Celestial Eyes right in the F1. This confidence came from the fact that Celestial and Telescope Eyes are related (Butterfly has telescope eyes). If we watch the development of Celestial Eyes, the eyes start from protruding to the right and left, which is the same development as in Telescope Eyes. But if telescope eyes development stops right there, the development of celestial eyes continue. After protruding to the sides, the eyes will rotate to the front, and then rotate again upwards. So, their first eye-development stage is the same, which makes me think they are related. And this proves to be true in the result.

The body types of the two variants differ. Butterfly has short rounded body form, while Celestial has an elongated body shape. My goal is the butterfly body form. But it seems that the elongated gene is dominant. All the offspring has elongated body shape. I hope there will be some shorter and rounder body in the F2.

The tail shapes of the two are different. Butterfly has beautiful large and long tail, while my celestial has short tail. The result varies between short and medium tail in F1, but no butterfly tail shape. I hope there will be some butterfly tail in the F2. If this happens, then my project will be completed. But I prepare myself for disappointment which might take longer time to realize my goal.

Now the F1 has come of age and start to lay eggs.

I had two males with decent enough Celestial Eyes type. The females are all Telescope eyes. The eggs will hatch tomorrow, and I am excited to see the result in the next several months.

These are the two males:

• 

• 

I will update the results when the time comes. Enjoy.