Category Archives: Chocolate Ranchu

blue ranchu, brown ranchu, Chocolate Ranchu, purple ranchu, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2023

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2023 (12)

Project #9,10,11: Blue, Brown, and Purple Ranchu Update

The fish I mentioned in the diary #6 show promising results. The cross produces four colors at once: grey, brown, purple and blue. I do not post the grey here. I will focus on the brown, purple, and blue. These are the champions after the final cull.

Brown Ranchu:

I am satisfied with these two brown ranchu, especially the first one. She shows beautiful smooth and thick curve. She can grow into a large and beautiful fish. Yes, she has weak headgrowth, and the size of the head is a bit small compared to the body. I plan to improve it by crossing with red-white ranchu that has better characteristic on this area. I think I will have beautiful offspring from this crossing next year.

The second fish is also female. So I do not have a male brown ranchu right now. The second fish is cute. She has a better headgrowth with more proportional head and body ratio. Well, actually I do not mind which one will be the next mother for my brown ranchu project. Both are adorable in their own ways.

Purple:

Well, this is the only purple that can survive the cull. And the quality is far below expectation. The head is totally bald. The peduncle is long and slim / thin. Those are two characteristics I would like to avoid. But he is the only one I have. So, my future purple ranchu lineage might depend on him. The color is attractive, though.

Blue:

The pictures were taken under afternoon sunlight. So the blue color looks a bit like purple due to the excessive sunlight. The first fish is female. I am not sure about the second one. The headgrowth is unique. The first has a little headgrowth, while the second one is bald. The curve of the first one is almost flat in the upper back, and sharply curves down before the tail. The second one has highest point of the back curve a bit to the front, which then slopes down not in a sharp manner. The color of the second fish is rich in gold combination.

I will certainly consider these blue to be my next parent fish. But I also have with me a different line of blue ranchu with a totally different character. I will compare them to decide what to do when they are ready to breed.

As a conclusion, I think my prize in this project is the brown ranchu.

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Brown Panda Ranchu, Chocolate Ranchu, Panda Ranchu, Purple goldfish

Brown Panda Ranchu

As a side result of the Purple Ranchu Project, I also get the Brown Panda Ranchu. Actually, it is the Purple Ranchu who demelanizes to produce a purple and white fish. The purple gets darker to produce the appearance of brown / light brown. This process is exactly the same as the demelanization process in the blue ranchu to become panda ranchu (Black and White Ranchu).

As this variety is still rare, I think it is better to document it here for future reference. Here are some pictures:

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Chocolate Ranchu

Chocolate Ranchu updates Dec 25th

chocolate ranchu

This is the F2 of the chocolate ranchu project. I am glad to see this fish, since it is totally free from any trace of dorsal fin, and the chocolate color is present. In this F2, very few chocolate color occurs. Most of them have abominable traces of dorsal, and weak compared to the wild color ones. To find such a piece, though only one, is a joy to me.

In terms of shape, this one has a high hump, which must be tackled on though it is not so easy. Glad I have experienced this in my panda ranchu project. This hump might be the last thing to tackle.

The tail is a bit long. I do not worry about this. Crossing back to ranchu will eventually shorten the tail. But I think, as an excess, long tail chocolate ranchu with pom pom will be nice 🙂

The pompom is also something to tackle on. Actually, I am not sure to retain this pom pom or not. According to standard, a ranchu should not have the pom pom. But it might indeed look nice in this chocolate breed. Well, let it be what it will be. I might not bother to tackle it.

From this point, I think to create a decent chocolate ranchu, I will need at least four more breeding step. This will mean 2 years at least. But the result of the 1st year might yield unique breeds saleable to collectors 🙂

There are two worries. First, since there is only 1 fish, this project is in jeopardy if something happen to it. So, I have prepared the second batch for spare. Second, the chocolate color occurs so few in the batch. Fewer than the blue I create from a cross between blue and common color. Does this mean that the chocolate color behave differently genetically from the blue? If yes, then there might be some complication I have not yet understood. I hope there won’t be such complication.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

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Chocolate Ranchu

Chocolate Ranchu – change of plan

The attempt I posted last week has resulted in an unwanted offspring. I was looking for defected dorsal. As the offspring enters the second week, I can see the dorsal part clearly:

Brown dorsalR

This sample shows brown fishes with the complete dorsal. So, the crossing back to its pompom parent has resulted in normal dorsal offspring in majority. I can say that 95 percent have the normal dorsal. At this culling stage, I also cull the ones with single anal fin. This leaves me with zero fish with defect in dorsal. So, I do not get the result I want from this crossing. My project is in jeopardy.

Luckily, I have a back up plan. Some months ago, I have predicted this problem when I realized that all my F1 were female. So I did another crossing between ranchu and pompom just for back up plan. This second crossing provides me with male defected F1 I needed, carrying the chocolate genetic in the recessive. They are still very young, too young to breed, I think. They are about 4 months old now. Can breed, but still too young. But I take my chance. Now, I breed the mature F1 female from, with the young immature F1 males.

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Compared to the previous attempt of crossing F1 with pompom, this crossing will yield more defected dorsal. Hopefully. But will also yield less chocolate color. So, hopefully there will be enough chocolate with defected dorsal for me to choose for the next parent.

The eggs hatched yesterday 🙂

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Chocolate Ranchu

Chocolate Ranchu

I have started these project probably more than 6 months ago. What I did was to cross a sideview ranchu with a chocolate pompom. My wish is to get the chocolate color from the pompom. The final result is to get a chocolate ranchu, or better still, a chocolate and white ranchu!

The result of the first cross was orange, long tail, bald head with little pompom goldfish with under-developed dorsal. Concerning the body shape, some come with normal dorsal fins, but they are not what I wanted. They are being culled out. The ones with abnormal dorsal fins are what I wanted in this stage, which I have already posted under the title “Sea Horse” in this blog. Concerning the orange color, it is expected, since I assume that the chocolate color is recessive to the orange color. So far so good. I was thinking that I only need to raise them to be mature parents, and I can mate F1 x F1 to produce chocolate semi ranchu goldfish.

Complication arose when I found out that all of the F1 were females. Now, I must find another way to continue this project.

My best available solution is to cross the F1 back with the chocolate pompom again. The result will be 50% chocolate color theoretically. But the long tail genetic and the pompom genetic will also get stronger, which are undesirable to create my goal. And the dorsal genetic will get stronger also, which will give me a lot of chocolate goldfish with normal dorsal. These are undesirable, but I might still be able to sell them. What I want here is chocolate goldfish with defected dorsal.

So, I crossed these two fishes about a week ago, one day earlier than my panda ryukin parents:

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These are the offspring:

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As you can see, some show darker color and some lighter color. I will cull out the darker color. The lighter color will be chocolate.

I have done my first culling, which was the color culling, in day 5 since hatching. These picture are taken two days ago, the day when the first culling began.

The next step in this project is to cross the chocolate (with defect dorsal fins) with sideview ranchu once again, which can be done as early as 6 months from now.

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