Category Archives: oranda

Brown Oranda, oranda, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2022, yellow oranda

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2022 (12)

This is a comparison between three shapes of Oranda.

Three of my Oranda have grown mature into Jumbo size. I think they have reached their peaks, or almost. So, it is the right time to compare them with the purpose of learning and adjusting my idealism of Oranda.

The first one is Helen the 2nd, as my main blueprint. She carries the recessive gene of purple color, so she is what I call a semi purple oranda. Let’s see her development over time:

Previous (6 months ago):

Now:

I am not really happy with the development. The headgrowth is growing, so there is no problem with it. But the body which was stout before seems to lose its thickness. I do not know why. Can it be because of the headgrowth? As the head grows, the previously high curve of the back bone looks a bit flat now. Or can it be due to the excessive breeding? Perhaps lots of nutrients in the body are directed to producing eggs to let the body lose its muscles, just like a human mother facing calcium deficiency after giving birth. I do not know. The size of the fish is amazing, but she looks like a young fish with mediocre quality. The color does not seem to change much. The orange color cannot become red. And yes, few flecks of black pigment appear on her body. It is not a sign of stress. It is common for a semi purple fish to develop such color over time. The first ray of the dorsal fin becomes untidy. The tail is in good shape.

These are the video of Helen from the side and top, showing her size:

The second oranda to compare is my Dark Choco Oranda. Amazingly, with such a round body she can grow into jumbo size also! Let’s see how she develops:

Previous (6 months ago):

Now:

She was not in my blue print at all. I never think about such a ryukin-like body shape. I do not even have a ryukin currently. So, this shape comes to me out of the blue. And the dark chocolate color is another blessing. I do not even know that such color exists. I only knew the tea-colored brown goldfish so far. So, to have this fish is like to hit a double jackpot for me. Since this fish has caught my attention, I think it is suitable for me to give her a name. But I cannot make up my mind whether to name her Kong or Godzila. I think Godzila sounds better, though she is a female.

The headgrowth grows but not so much. It grows in the same pace with the body growth, so she can maintain her bulky ryukin-like shape with the small headgrowth. But the color seems to grown more solid, and it spreads to the fins! The dorsal fin is getting slightly bent.

Seeing this color, I remember that we have various spectrum of black color in goldfish. But usually, we divide them into just two: solid black, and not so solid one. The tea-colored brown resembles the not so solid type of black pigment, while the dark choco resembles the solid black color. There seems to be another layer or coat of brown color on top of the scale, which might be the cause of darker appearance. Let’s review the differences in a picture:

I felt the urge to preserve this dark brown color. So far, I see it nowhere else. It will be a pity if we lose such a beautiful color. I have a male sibling of her with the same dark color, thank God! But the sibling has a very different shape of body and fin! If I mate them, there is a possibility to be able to preserve the dark brown color, but I might not be able to maintain the bulky shape of Godzila. Well, life seldom gives all we want.

But there was a bigger problem than that. Godzila is now about 1.5 years of age and no sign of breeding till last month. Fish usually lays eggs at the age of four months in my place. Godzila definitely falls under the category of unproductive / sterile. I already gave up on her. Fortunately, suddenly she laid eggs for the first time at the beginning of this month. I was not prepared at that time. But I was able to keep the eggs the second time she mated. I could not wait to see the result!

These are her video, from side, from top (to show the size) and the comparison between the dark and the light brown:

The third fish is a male yellow goldfish. He is a jumbo fish right now and the last of yellow oranda I keep at this moment. Of course, I have his offspring but in a crossing appearance. I mean, I cross her with a goosehead and comes up with a red and white fish as the F1. They are semi yellow oranda. This yellow has a stout longer body with a beautiful headgrowth. Let’s see the development of this handsome guy:

Previous (6 months ago):

Now:

The headgrowth has developed very well. The goosehead type of head is visible, along with the slight development on its cheeks. The fish does not lose its stoutness nor its body length, which I think is good. The only weaknesses are the fold in its lower right tail and the dorsal fin losing a bit of its ability to stay erect.

Here are his videos:

And now it is the time to compare these three:

Well, do tell me how will you rank them and why 😊

Advertisement
Standard
dancing queen, oranda, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2022

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2022 (10)

This update covers the evolution of my Dancing Queen (DQ) Project.

To refresh a little bit, my original DQ project was meant to create sideview tosakin. This was the best result from the year 2020 after several years of effort:

But I guess it was a lonely journey. I decided to terminate the project for good. I was struggling at that time. It was hard for me to let go my lovely babies. Just before I let go all my DQ, I made an unthoughtful move by mating my last DQ with a grey Rosetail Oranda. Perhaps in my subconscious awareness I was hoping that Oranda with DQ tail might receive better acceptance. As a result, I ended up with few beautiful grey Oranda like this:

But I quickly realized they could not display their beautiful tail in deep water pond. So, once again, I was thinking of terminating them. But, as before, I managed to unthoughtfully breed them before I sold them. And I think I hit a jackpot. Some of the offspring have flatter tail, making them more suitable for shallow water and top-viewing. So I kept three of them in my large shallow pond along with my tosakin. As the fishes grew mature, I was amazed with the development. One of them grew into a very beautiful fish. Every time I showed him to my friends, they cannot help marvel at its tail. It is visibly different from tosakin tail. And I cannot stop taking his pictures:

And this is the tail position when he swims forward:

The tail is way longer and larger than my Tosakin, and softer. There is a flavor of the rosetail effect which is absent in Tosakin. Yes, it is very similar to the Orchid Tail developed by friends in Thailand. Since it has no legal name yet, my friends and I call it Oranda Dancing Queen (Oranda DQ). And I think I would like to develop it further to be one of my signature.

Too bad, the female are not as good as this male. This is one productive female which I breed with him:

I hope there will be some decent offspring resembling the father.

But I think I need to improve its color and enhance the tail feature. So, I decided to cross the handsome male with Tosakin. I know, this might impact negatively to the headgrowth. But I think I can work it out later on. The tail might look closer to tosakin, but I think I can select some closer to the father. And these are some of the current results:

With this piece as the best, I think:

I can still see the softness characteristic of the tail.

So, my DQ has evolved into Oranda DQ.

Well, let’s wait how these babies will develop in the future. Will they grow their headgrowth? Will the tail become as handsome as their father’s? Let’s hope so!

Standard
oranda, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2022, yellow oranda

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2022 (3)

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.

Standard
oranda, Purple goldfish, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (23)

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.

Standard
Blue Oranda, oranda, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (22)

Update result on Blue Oranda Project.

Near the end of the year, I think it is time to update the results of my projects. Let me start with Blue Oranda.

This is the last of my previous line of blue oranda:

To analyze this previous line, I can draw several conclusion. First, it lacks good headgrowth. Second, the peduncle area is a bit stretched (elongated). Third, it lacks body width (too slim). Fourth, the tail has an erect angle though not superb quality. Fifth, dorsal looks fine. Sixth, the color is good and stable. And seven, the abdomen has a bad shape (it is not full).

I mated this previous line of blue oranda with two fishes: Basic Material line and Helen.

These two are the results of the cross between the previous blue oranda line with my basic material:

Analyzing these two, I think there is an improvement from the previous line. The improvement takes place in the shorter (more proportional) peduncle area, better body width, and better abdomen shape. Concerning the headgrowth, there is no improvement yet. The tails vary. The top fish (sex unknown) is better than the bottom fish (male) in terms of the tail erect angle and body width. The color is stable. Remembering that this project is a two year project and right now is half way, I think I can safely conclude that there is already an improvement in the line. The remaining tasks to improve this new line (blue oranda line 1) is to add more headgrowth, to make the body width and tail angle more uniform in a better quality.

This piece is the result of crossing the previous blue oranda line with Helen:

Yes, the color is white. This is a blue oranda that lost its melanin. The problem with this crossing is the instability of its color. Most turn into white. I redo this cross many times, collecting the few stable one. So, yes, I have some more offspring from this cross, but they are still young and I do not take their pictures yet. I will wait for perhaps a couple months to observe them. Meanwhile, this white fish is the only mature fish I have from this cross. When I was about to cull him, I realize that he has certain attractive features. The body shape is very interesting. It has body width, it is not short, and it has high hump (high enough for an oranda). I notice that there is a current trend in the market to have oranda with ryukin-like body. This white fish also has almost such a high hump, but with a longer body which makes it unique. So, to conclude about the body shape, I think this white fish has a high curve, very good body width, proportional body length (not too short nor too long), and still have a beautiful abdoment shape (round, touching the tail). The headgrowth is slightly better than the new line 1. The tail has a better angle and it is rose-tail style. The drawback is on the lower lobes of the tail. When he swims, the lower lobes will move inside.

If possible, I would like to cross this white fish with the new line 1. If the first fish of new line one turns out to be a productive female, this can be done. Perfect. But I am not sure with its sex for now.

What I will do for now is to wait for the rest of the blue offspring to mature. I was hoping to see blue fish with the quality close to this white oranda. If I can get such offspring, then new line 1 can be terminated. I will just use the new line 2.

So, this is the update of my blue oranda project for this year. I am happy with the result. Next, I will also update the result of my other oranda projects.

Standard
oranda, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (21)

In the beginning of this year, I mentioned the use of an oranda lineage I call my Basic Material. I crossed this line with my purple oranda line to produce Helen (the semi purple oranda). Let me refresh how they look like:

Besides crossing this line with my purple, blue, and brown oranda, I inbred them to keep the pure lineage to anticipate their usage one day. But I detect the saturation in their gene. Minor problems seem to occur in the offspring. Currently I only keep these three males:

In my first impression, they all lack the body stoutness of the parents. But the headgrowth feature is preserved. This headgrowth is important since Helen and her offspring still lacking in headgrowth.

So, several weeks ago I managed to cross Helen with those three musketeers. I am enthusiastic to see how the offspring will appear. There is a rule of thumb that the headgrowth (the front half of the body) tend to follow from the female parent while the rest of the body tend to follow from the male parent. Obviously, I go against this rule of thumb for this project. Anyway, it is just a rule of thumb for me. I never think it as a 100% truth. For the headgrowth, I hope to see a headgrowth larger than Helen’s. For the body, I am excited to find out. If we examine Helen’s body formation, it is different from the Basic Material already. But Helen’s body is also good in its own shape. Concerning the tail, both Helen and the Basic Material already have the rose-tail type. The offspring will inherit this trait, I believe. I just hope that they are free from the minor defects seen in the parents. The first of the three musketeers has excess layer in its upper lobes (left and right). The second one has slight unevenness in its lower lobe (not seen in the picture). The third one has the same weakness as Helen, which is one of the lower lobe folds inside when swimming. Perhaps I need to tackle this problem later if it persists.

I will update the results in the next few months.

Standard
oranda, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (20)

Helen was born at the beginning of this year. She is not one year old yet. Interestingly, she has become the primary female in my breeding project this year.

Close to the end of this year, there are three projects left for Helen before she retires:

  1. Deep red oranda project
  2. Basic Material Preservation project
  3. Purple Oranda project

In this essay, I will update the first project.

In my childhood, I had one occasion to keep a special red-white oranda. It was special because the red color was so intense. It was not orange nor deep orange. It was truly red. I have never seen such an oranda again ever since. If we examine Helen, she is an orange and white fish. In the world of goldfish, we call it red and white, since we believe the orange can be improved by giving her certain ingredients. But even with a good color enhancer diet, it is hard to improve Helen’s color in my city where the general climate is warm (tend to be hot). It is easier to achieve deep red coloration in the colder water. Anyway, I do not use color enhancer often. I use it mostly during the color mutation stages.

I felt lucky when one of my red-white butterfly goldfish offspring developed an intense red color. It was an anomaly in the batch. There was only one individual. I named him Beni. The red color is so striking even without color enhancer diet. I have used Beni to improve the color of my butterfly goldfish (it is under way). I have also mated Beni with my semi-tosakin goldfish with the long term purpose of creating tosakin with deep red coloration. And now, I am thinking of reviving my childhood special oranda!

So, I mated Beni with Helen at the end of last month.

Their feature differences are in the eyes, headgrowth, and tail shape. Adding color to the list, the project becomes a four-level difficulties. Well, the body shape is certainly different, but I think it will not contribute much to the difficulty. So, with this difficulty level, I do not think my special oranda will occur directly in the F1.

I predict I will get some intense red color offspring in F1, but not in the shape of a decent oranda. The protruding eyes are usually recessive to the normal eyes, so I expect normal eyes in the F1. I will also expect minimal or no headgrowth. From my experience, such a cross between a goldfish with headgrow and without headgrowth will result in no headgrowth in the initial stage. But as the fish gets older, it will develop small headgrowth. Let’s assume that I will get no headgrowth in the F1. The tail might not be as erect as I desire. The body shape might be so so. I will just pick the intense color ones to be the next parent fish.

At this stage I have two choices:

  1. I can cross F1 x F1
  2. I can cross F1 with another oranda

The first choice will strengthen the desired red color, but will let the improvement of oranda body conformation to chance. In fact, I might have some telescope eyes as the result of the recessive gene meeting. The headgrowth and tail might come variably, but might not even close to the desired standard. If this course is taken, the next step is to pick the F2 (already with deep red color) that resembles oranda as close as possible. From there, I can cross the F2 with another oranda.

The second choice will let me improve the body conformation to oranda standard. But, I do not know about the coloration. At this point, I need to admit that I do not know how the deep red color and the orange color will interact when they are mated. I know about yellow x orange, or blue x orange. They follow simple Mendellian rule. I also know about black x orange, which resulted in a spectrum between black and orange (namely: black, semi-black, grey, black-gold, and orange). But different crossing between black and orange can result in different color, though still within that spectrum. But I do not know what will I get if I cross deep red and orange. My guess is that it might behave similar to the black x orange. There might be a spectrum of color in the result (namely, orange, reddish orange, and intense red). But my F1 is not purely deep red since it is a cross between red and orange already. Will that mean my chance of getting intense red will be very slight in the F2 or even none? This course might give me a better oranda conformation but jeopardizing the intense red color.

Which course should I take?

Well, I still have half a year to come up with an answer. Plenty of time. But if you have any insight for me, please write a comment. I will be thankful.

Standard