I am really enchanted by Cow Ranchu. Producing one good quality after several years of effort cannot be considered as a success. I might need new ammunitions. Gladly, a seller friend (Kwan Goldfish, Jakarta) imported several beautiful Cow Ranchu several months ago. I observed that they have different characters from mine. I quickly bought some of them. I selected the fishes with least red pigmentation since I could not find any without any red color. I also chose the ones with minimal black patches. Well, this is a personal preference. I believe the black color will grow.
This is the suspected male.
The next one below is a female. She does not lay eggs yet.
And the last one is surprisingly productive. She lays eggs from the start. The eggs are not many, and some are infertile. I guess this is the first time for her to lay eggs. She is a bit too young. I expect better result from her in the coming weeks. I mated her with my current male Cow Ranchu (from Diary #15) since the male sibling does not produce enough sperm yet. Probably he is still very young.
My Cow Ranchu babies that I mentioned in the Diary #10 this May have matured and are ready to spawn. This activity takes away a lot of time and space from my Oranda projects for the last several months.
One surprising update is the transformation of one particular baby. As I looks back to his pictures in May, I marvel at his current transformation. These are the before and after pictures:
The black pigment has grown significantly in just several months. This transformation happened also in his father. (https://hermantogoldfish.com/2020/10/31/the-transformation-of-my-cow-ranchu-2019-2020/) I can confidently conclude right now that Cow Ranchu has the ability to grow their black color. This conclusion comes with a note. In my observation, when the young fish has black pigment, be it a black dot or a large black pattern, which exists on the surface of the skin, then the black pigment can grow. But if the fish is totally white without any melanin present in any layer of its skin (some call it Casper) as in Casper the ghost), or if the black pigment exists only under the skin (some call it blue-based / bluish color), my conclusion does not hold. I am not sure yet if the outer black pigments can emerge in such fish.
This cow is a male. There was another male I mentioned in the Diary #10. But since the tail was too widespread, I discard him as a male parent.
The female is the only grey one. She was the offspring of a different version of Cow Ranchu (which I have not documented well – sorry for that). She does not change her color. These are the before and after pics:
The tail is a bit widespread, but I still use her for lack of choice.
What is interesting in both fishes is the small tail size. The current market names it the Tiny Tail. And this feature carries forward to the next generation
I mated the Cow with the Grey several times. As happened many times before, the result is far from satisfying. All of them are calico (no cow color), and mostly come with all sorts of defects. Yet there is an improvement this time. From the first batch, I keep five of them. This is better than before where I discarded all of the offspring. From these five, only the first two I consider as my prize. The rest are just backups. Here they are:
Though the back curves are not very smooth, the shape of the curve is good. There might be some improvement later on, I hope. And they already have black pigments on the outer skin. I hope to see the black pigment grow. I consider calicos with such quality (the growing black pigment) as an interesting quality. These are the pics from top view:
I will see how the fishes develop and decide later onwhat to make out of them. Perhaps they can be my line of Calico Ranchu. Perhaps I can use them in my Cow Ranchu Projects. I have not documented the younger batches, since they are too small to take picture. But the second and third batches are all calicos.
I would like to conclude this Diary with the pictures of the three backups. Have a good day.
This is a tribute to my Dancing Queen. Several years ago I tried to create a side-view version of Tosakin. I nicknamed the fish as the Dancing Queen to appreciate the beautiful playfulness of the tail. I successfully created an erect tail with split, and the tosakin flips could be enjoyed from side-viewing.
The tail was really a beauty. Yet, the body was weak and plain. The color was just orange or grey. I tried to improve the body and the coloration with this result:
The body was improved. The orange and white color was certainly an improvement. The tail seemed to be slightly smaller, yet still a decent one. However, it seemed that the market did not respond well. Besides that, I have a lot of other projects on goldfish. So, I struggled hard to let the project go. This fish was the last (and best) Dancing Queen I had, and I let a friend adopted her without leaving any offspring.
Well, perhaps it is natural for a breeder to have a deep attachment to his creation. I was ready to let go. But I still mated the uncle of the last Dancing Queen (a grey one, and sorry I did not take any picture of it) with an Oranda. I did not even remember which Oranda I used. This was not a planned project. And I did not expect anything. Such a cross might yield nothing of any worth. So, this cross was an uncalculated project, ready to be discarded at any moment.
Surprisingly, something good came out of this project! I did not expect to be able to get a decent oranda with dancing queen tail from the first attempt of the crossing. It was almost impossible, I thought. But the fact speaks otherwise. I ends up with two decent oranda with very beautiful Dancing Queen tail style! Yes, the color was only grey, but I think they are lovely.
This one is the first fish:
This is how the tail looks like when swimming (when the tail collapsed)
And this is the second fish:
This is the tail when swimming
There are oranda with similar type of tail in the market produced by Thailand breeders. They named the tail as Orchid tail. I do not know about the history of it, but I might walk in the same path as them.
This is the topview appearance of the fishes:
The appearance of these two disrupted my current oranda project. I already had my Basic Material Oranda. But the tail was Rosetail type (wrinkle tail). Compared to this Dancing Queen tail style, I think I face a great temptation to incorporate this type of tail into my Oranda. There is no way I ignore such a beauty.
So, last week I mated Helen the Oranda with these two 😊
Remember Helen?
This is Helen
Sometimes Helen shows a bit of tail flips similar to the Dancing Queen, though not always. I think this is a good sign. The mating between these fishes might yield an outstanding result.
This is Helen doing her flips
I am enthusiastic to see the results 😊 Perhaps my Dancing Queen will evolve into Oranda with Dancing Queen tail shape.
My helper takes a week leave to attend a business in his village. I am all alone to take care of all these goldfish. Yes, it will be a tiring week for me. Yet, I am very excited to have this occasion once in a while.
This morning, as usual, I woke up at 05.00. I took a time to read the Scripture accompanied by a cup of hot Milo (half dose to reduce my sugar consumption, of course). Then I did my routine exercises to prevent muscle injury when working on the ponds, especially when I must do the works alone. At 06.00 I went to my ponds which is just 5 minutes walking from my house.
The first thing I did was to check which goldfish was laying eggs. The one mating this morning was the Cow Ranchu. This was before the schedule. I was expecting her to lay eggs tomorrow. Since the eggs came out prematurely, there was only few of them. I think I know my mistake. The fish is a productive one. Feeding her solely with wheatgerm pellets is enough to keep her productive. Yet, yesterday I gave them frozen bloodworm and live daphnia. That was an unnecessary move for a productive fish. Those diets might be responsible to induce the breeding before its time. Anyway, I collected the eggs and determined to feed pellets only for now.
Next, I did the water change for all tubs without filtration. I siphoned some of them and change the water up to 90%. I did total water change for the rest and scrub them clean. I usually leave the latter to my helper. But today I did it myself. I did it cautiously to avoid back pain.
The tubs in the top shelf (from the right) contain the cross between telescope butterfly and celestial, daphnia culture, newly hatched brown oranda, and a weeks old blue ranchu. The bottom shelf contains the cross between tricolor oranda and purple ranchu (the first from the right). The three other tubs are daphnia culture.
Three of these tubs are the home for the topview ranchu, blue and purple ranchu, and the cross between tricolor oranda and purple ranchu that have come of age. Others are daphnia culture. I water change all of the tubs except the daphnia culture.
These nine tubs are the home of young blue oranda, blue pompom, young topview ranchu, and newly hatced cow ranchu (occupying 5 tubs of its own). Yes, I am concentrating on the cow ranchu at this time. All the tubs on the top shelf need water change, and all on the bottom need to be scrubbed.
I guess the hardest part was to scrub a big fiber tub 1.5 meter x 1.5 meter. I keep four large topview ranchu there and do a total water change every four days.
It is noticeable that I did not scrub them hard enough. I did not have enough energy to scrub it super clean. My helper usually did a better job. Well, he is a lot younger than me. Pardon my age.
While I scrub the tub, I put the fishes temporarily on these small containers.
Since today is Sunday, it is time to change the water of a special pond:
This 1 meter x 60 centimeter pond was meant as a filtration area. But I changed the function into a deep pond without any filtration. Somehow, the fishes I kept there can grow fast. The ranchu in the blue container is the resident, accompanied by her small friend. This ranchu is in the middle of a Keeping Contest which just starts and will ends on January next year. Keeping Contest is a routine occasion held by our Surabaya Goldfish Community (SGC).
Then I attended the eggs I collected from the day before. I checked the water. If there was any sign of foulness, I did the water change for the eggs:
After all these water change activities. I still had things to do. There were three bowls of cow ranchu (age: one week) to cull.
After culling, I fed my goldfishes their breakfast. The diets include frozen bloodworm, live daphnia, and many types of pellets from different brands.
Then I feed the daphnia culture:
I dedicate this large pond and many tubs to culture daphnia. I feed them with dried quail dung.
Last but not least, I must wash clean all the tools I use and clean the floor.
After putting the nets on top of some tubs that need shading, I went home. All these took two and a half hour. I was exhausted, thirsty, and hungry. Back at home, I need to water my garden first, and feeding the goldfish I kept in my house. Then I enjoyed a glass of cold apple cider vinegar with honey (my favorite drink) and porridge breakfast with my lovely wife. After taking my bath, I joined the Sunday Service of my Church via online. That was my morning.
It seems that my writing activity is not as active as my breeding activity. There has been a lot of progress in my breeding projects that I have not updated here. Let me try to catch it up.
In this occasion, I would like to update my Oranda breeding project since it is my main priority this year. To continue the Diary number 7 about the cross between Purple Oranda and my Basic Oranda Material in order to improve the quality of my purple oranda, I have selected a pair of offspring (semi purple Oranda) as the main parent fish. They are mature right now and have been bred several times. These are their pictures (before and after):
Before
After
The fish above has grown big and becomes difficult to handle during hand-spawning. The body is strongly built. The tail wrinkles beautifully displaying the rose-tail style. The headgrowth has grown a little bit, but not impressive enough. This is the part that need to be improved still. Anyway, at this stage, I am satisfied with the quality so far. This female is productive. She is the main star during this year. I use her in several different projects. Let’s call her Helen the Oranda.
Before
After
This male is from the same batch as the female one. Strangely his red and black pigments grow. At first, I thought he was in a stressful condition. But that was not the case. I mated this male with the main female to produce improved Purple Oranda. But complication arose. Most of the purple oranda produced lost their purple color and turned into white fish. I must discard them. Right now I am left with only two purple offspring which seem to retain their color. Right now the offspring is seven centimeters in size. I will post them later when they are bigger. So, with only two purple offspring left, I cannot say that this project is succesful. I plan to redo this mating once again to see if I can get more purple ones.
From my crossing of the Basic Oranda Material with my blue oranda of the same age as above fishes, I am blessed with one male semi blue oranda. Its phenotype is red, of course. I mentioned this project in my previous posts but had never posted any picture. So, I do not have the “before” picture. This is the recent picture of him:
The body is stout. The tail has some wrinkle genetics but it is not quite the same as the Helen the Oranda (the semi purple one). The headgrowth is slightly better than the result of the semi purple project. I mention this male because he is significant in producing my improved blue oranda. I mated this male with Helen which successfully resulted in improved version of my blue oranda. A small percentage of the offspring loses its blue pigmen but the majority are good. So, excitingly, the cross between the semi blue oranda and the semi purple oranda results in good blue oranda offspring. They are still young right now, roughly seven centimeters in size. I will update them later when they are bigger.
Concerning my brown oranda project, I mentioned my failure before. But this week, I have successfully crossed my previous version of brown oranda with Helen. I have lots of confidence of being successful, but it is too early now to claim that. I will update the result in the next several months.
One more thing. I have another female semi purple Oranda besides Helen. The color was grey, and now she turns totally black. I did not include her in my post number 7 at that time since I was not aware of her presence. I thought all have been mutated into red or red-white fishes. Only when I did the total water change I realize that there was one grey fish left. I was planning to cull her out, but right now she ends up as the only back up female from the semi purple project. Considering her strong black pigment, she might be a better candidate to produce purple color than Helen. Yet, she has slender body and weaker tail than Helen. I do not take her picture. I just think I need to mention her in case I use her in my project one day.
So, to conclude, the successful one at this point is the improved blue oranda project. The purple and brown ones still need to be repeated again. And another interesting side project involving Helen comes to mind which I will report in the next post. Please wait 😊
First, let me update the projects I have started at the beginning of this year: the blue, brown, purple, and yellow oranda. I have crossed my original fishes with the better quality oranda which I labeled as my Basic Material (orange in color). The purpose of the project is to improve the quality of my blue, brown, purple, and yellow oranda.
I have crossed each type of color with the Basic Material. Unfortunately, not all went as planned. The successful one is the purple oranda project. The crossing produced male and female semi purple oranda (right now they are in orange and red white color). I have mated these F1 x F1 on this June and have kept the purple fry only. So far so good. It is a different story with the blue cross.
The cross between blue and basic material yields good quality semi blue offspring. Sadly, they are all male. I cannot continue the project with this condition. (I still keep one female blue oranda from my original line as a back up, though.)
The brown and basic material cross failed miserably. Due to the overload in my capacity, I could not take care the offspring well. I must let them go. (I still have brown oranda from two other lines which I can use as back up.)
The yellow project produced so many single tail, which I must cull out. So, this project also failed. (Of course, I still keep some yellow for back up plan.)
Besides these crossing, I also paired my Basic Material with each other because I might use them later on. This line is important for me. I must manage them well.
Second, I just realize that I do not have to make four separate projects as mentioned above, actually. The blue, brown, and purple are somewhat related. This fact can simplify my breeding strategy a lot. Let me explain.
To review a bit, this chart explains the basic:
The blue and brown are not related. When they are crossed, the F1 is grey in color, which sometimes turn into orange fish. But when the grey is paired with each other (F1 x F1), the result will be blue, brown, purple, and grey. I always cull out the grey. This is how I get my purple goldfish.
So, although the blue and brown are not related, the blue is somewhat related to the purple. The brown is also related to the purple. Here we see that the key is the purple goldfish. When we crossed the blue and purple, the result will be blue and purple right on the F1. The same case happen in the cross between brown and purple. We will immediately get brown and purple.
So, what I need to cross with the basic material is actually only the purple. When I get the desired result (the purple with higher quality), I can cross the purple with the blue and the brown. Instead of mating each color with the basic material (three projects), it is sufficient for me to cross the purple only. This simplify my projects a lot, doesn’t it? This is the refinement of my breeding strategy.
The yellow oranda is a different case. This color has no relation at all with the blue, brown, or purple. So, this project must stand on its own. I must cross the yellow with the basic material.
I think it has been more than two years I have tried to breed Cow Ranchu but with no success. Not only it is rare to obtain the expected color, to get a decent body quality in the offspring needs lots of luck. Most of them are defected, either totally missing the anal fin or having ugly backbone. I was tempted to give up many times.
Last week I lost the first Cow Ranchu I bought due to disease. It was a handsome Cow.
I was thinking about trying to breed him one more time, pairing him with his own offspring that show decent color. But now that hope is lost.
Well, after so many failures, I currently have four offspring. One does not count, since it is such an ugly fish though the color is decent. I will just keep it as back up. I do not take her picture. The other three are promising, though they are far from perfect. All of them are female.
This one is the best:
The black marking is visible clearly from the top. Based on my experience with the parent, the black marking will continue to grow. I am excited to see what she will become. Hopefully this fish is fertile. It will take another two months or more for her to start producing eggs.
Another one is this:
The tail of this fish is too wide and flat. This tail type hinders the fish to swim well. The curve is not smooth enough. Yet the color is lovely. Yes, it has red color, which make her unqualified to be called Cow. Yet, the black dots look beautiful. I am certain this black dots will also grow.
I have a suspicion that this fish is not the offspring of my first ranchu I posted above. During this two years I bought some more Cows from different lineage. And they look different from my first purchase. I am sorry I have not taken pictures of the 2nd type of Cow Ranchu. From this observation, I conclude that there are more than one lineage of Cow Ranchu in the market. This 2nd fish looks closer to the second lineage I keep.
If we examine the 2nd fish closely and compare it with the 1st, we will see that the eyes are different. The 1st fish has totally black eyes, just like her father. The 2nd one has normal eyes. The behavior of the black markings look different, also. The black marks in the 1st fish tend to be whole, forming a large block, while the black marks of the 2nd fish tend to be in the shape of dots. Those are two differences I observe.
The third fish is interesting:
Yes, this is a wild color metallic ranchu. And this is also the offspring of Cow Ranchu! I begin to speculate that the making of Cow Ranchu might involve metallic scale fish! Perhaps a wild color one, or even black ranchu! Well, this is still my guess. Hopefully my future projects will give me a more solid answer.
So much is the update of my Cow Ranchu project. At this point, I can not do anything other than waiting for them to mature sexually. I will post the update. Wish me success.
Yellow Color in goldfish is a fascinating project for me due to its rarity. My main project is to create Yellow Oranda (or better, Yellow and White Oranda), which I have succeeded. This variant falls in the category of Metallic Scale. Now my task is to improve the quality of the fish in terms of its headgrowth, body shape, and tail.
A side project in this Yellow Adventure is to create Yellow and White Transparent Scale Oranda. I nickname the variant as the Yellow Sakura Oranda. I did this out of curiosity to satisfy my imagination. In fact, I have a doubt about its market acceptance. Can the fish be clearly differentiated from the common Calico Oranda and its variations?
I started this project last year. I mated my Yellow Oranda (metallic scale) with a Calico Oranda. The F1 were Sakura in its Phenotype. I had a chance to inbreed the F1 this January. Too bac, most of the offspring have single tail and I must cull them out. I was left with only four fishes, which grow into different colors. One become Sakura with strong red color, one is a black and white fish, another one is a color between yellow and orange, and the best one is clearly yellow with white and black / blue spots! This last one is what I am interested in.
The yellow color is pale, but it is clearly yellow. However, it is a bit hard to capture in camera. I must do some editing to try to bring out the real color. I cannot say it is nice, but surely it is an interesting combination when combined with the white color. My surprise comes from the melanin showing up in the combination in the form of blue and black spots. I thought the melanin pigment will go away when the fish grows up. But it stays.
Well, the fish is not a perfect one. The middle tail does not split (but invisible from the side viewing). Yet the body and tail shape are not bad. Concerning the color, let the reader be the judge.
One type of goldfish that I avoided in the twenty years of my breeding activity is the Pearlscale. Not because I dislike them. I just think they are hard to keep. In my three attempts to keep them (and to breed them once), all of them ended up developing bubble-like disease in their bodies. I do not know what disease it is. I do not find such disease in other goldfish varieties. The fishes that developed that bubble seemed to suffer. My heart ached when I saw them that way. That is the reason I avoided breeding Pearlscale.
But Pearlscale was always in my heart. I remembered my childhood day when I had a Pearlscale in my tank. At that time, the Pearlscale was of the old style. It had a long flowing tail. This type is hard to find nowadays in my country. The market is now dominated by the Mutiara Tikus (translated as Mouse Pearlscale, developed by the Malaysian with the round body, sharp pointed head like a mouse, and short tail features). As a boy, I loved to watch my Pearlscale until I fell asleep in front of the tank. That fish became the model for my first goldfish childhood drawing.
In my teenager, my uncle gave me his giant Pearlscale. I could remember vividly, it was as big as a small-sized coconut, larger than a tennis ball! I put the fish in my pond only to find it floating dead the next morning. My happiness turned into sorrow. Concerning the size, I do not know if it was an exaggerated memory or if it was really that big. But it was always my desire to grow a Pearlscale someday towards that size. I never succeed to achieve it with all my Pearlscale during my life up to now.
My breeding projects so far was to experiment with unique varieties or color. I made sketches of new goldfish types. One of my imagination was to create a round-belly goldfish, such as Pearlscale, but without the Pearlscale. So it was just a round fish with metallic scale – a metallic ball. But it is a project that I never start. Just a wild imagination. Yet this shows that Pearlscale is always close to my heart.
Last year, out of nowhere, I found several Pearlscale in my offspring.
I was surprised. I did not keep Pearlscale for so long already, so there was no Pearlscale genetics in my fishes. I did not intend to breed any. How come they suddenly appeared in my collection?
These Pearlscale was a natural mutation from the Tosakin – Butterfly cross which I had done for several years. I did a lot of inbreeding and backcross breeding with Tosakin and Butterfly. For many generations, they never yielded Pearlscale, which was normal. I do not know why, suddenly there was a whole batch that turned to round belly, some with obvious pearlscale, some not so obvious. Well, I found this weird. But I welcome them.
So, now, I have Pearlscale again as a gift from heaven. Never ask, but I receive. And they are different from the Pearlscale in the market. The popular Pearlscale is transparent scale type. Mine is metallic scale type – a variant seldom seen nowadays. The popular one is the short tail variant. Mine is towards the butterfly tail type. They are unique. I am happy with them. Since they are metallic scale, the Pearls are not so eye-catching. Some doesn’t even seem to have the protruding scales – and this will be my imagination come to reality without any effort! And more, they do not seem to develop the bubble disease!
From the offsprings, only four I found to be vigorous. The rest were weak or stunted. From this four, only one is male (the grey one).
I still do not know if they can produce true. Will their offspring be just normal butterfly without the telescope eye? Or will they become true metallic Pearlscale with butterfly tail? Or will they be the Steel Ball of my imagination? The first mating attempt produce infertile eggs. The second attempt produce less than ten hatchlings. This morning they breed for the third time, and hopefully produce a better result. Let’s wait for the updates!
Here are the four metallic Pearlscale with (semi) butterfly tail:
This is the update of my Purple Oranda Project. The aim of the project is to improve the quality of my Purple Oranda. The quality of my previous Purple Oranda was skinny fish with minimal headgrowth and ordinary tail. On January this year, I started to cross it with a bulkier Red (Orange) Oranda that has a better headgrowth and the so called rose-tail, which I called my Basic Material. Since the Purple Color is recessive to the Red color, the offspring are either red (orange) or red-white (orange-white) in their phenotype. The F1 show improved body, headgrowth, and tail quality. But the quality is not uniform as will be seen in the pictures below. The Basic Material quality has not been achieved at this stage.
The current results are fast growing. I moved them outdoor last week to see if they were ready to mate. I am a bit worried that I cannot see any visible female when I inspect them. I can see some males with white particles on the pectoral fins. But I do not see any protruding anal in the rest of the fish without the white particles. I do not know if they are immature males, or females, or infertile fish.
The current state does not produce Purple Color yet. My main strategy to produce an improved Purple color is to mate F1 x F1. Yet, the worry I mention above might be a hindrance. For the back up strategy, I still keep a productive female from my previous Purple Oranda. I can mate her with the F1. But this move might decrease the quality I have seen in the F1. Well, at least I still have the back up plan intact. In the next six months or less I might be able to update the results.
This is the productive female from the previous breed. Notice that the body tends to be slim, the headgrowth is minimal, and the tail shape is ordinary. It is considered a poor quality Oranda. But the color is beautiful.
And these are the F1. Notice that the bodies are bulkier, and the headgrowth are better thought still small. The tail show some wrinkles in some of them, as the characteristic of the rose tail (or semi rose-tail). One of them (number 4) shows a large hump as in Ryukin. I think this is an outlier and I will not use it if I do not have to.
hermantogoldfish 