I have crossed two female orange metallic scale ranchu to my tricolor metallic scale goldfish (as depicted in my previous posting). The aim is to create tricolor metallic scale ranchu.

First, it must be noted that the metallic scale here is not a true metallic scale, but it is a derivation of transparent scale calico fish which has acquired metallic scale appearance.

Second, after second consideration, this choice of orange metallic scale ranchu to cross might not be the best choice. The reason is that the demelanization process (the process of getting rid of black color) in orange metallic scale ranchu is working strongly. This combination of parent might result in the offsprings loosing its ability to retain its black color. Blue ranchu or black ranchu might be a better choice. Anyway, the cross has been made, so I will stick with this to see how it will turn out.

Third, the two female orange metallic scale ranchu that I use came from two different lines. The first is a thailand metallic scale ranchu, and the second is my own breed, which though the appearance is an orange metallic scale ranchu, it carries a recessive blue (or panda) color in its gene. I don’t know how will a recessive blue help, but I hope this second fish will be my luck in repressing the demelanization process. It is interesting that the offsprings of these two fishes behave differently.

This is the male parent

This is the first female parent, which does not have the recessive blue genetic. The second female looks similar, so I do not post a picture of it.

From the first female parent, the majority of the offspings have complete dorsal! This is out of my expectation. My rough estimate is 90% have complete dorsal. I cull them out, leaving only few with irregular dorsal. Though the observation is too early, I think I saw more scales in the offsprings, but less black color. This lack of black color is not conclusive yet, since I keep them in light-colored background due to lack of facility. The offspings which resemble transparant scale  (such as calico color) with few metallic scales are very few. A sample of the first offspings is shown below

The second female parent yields roughly 50 percent of complete dorsal offspings, which I culled out early. From the irregular dorsal ones, roughly half show the characteristic of transparent scale with few metallic scales on its body. The other half show more metallic scales – more than half of their body are covered with metallic scales. This is the trait I am looking for. Concerning color, they seem to retain more purple color. This is a sample of them:

When I made this cross, I did not know what to expect and what to cull out. Now I have a better idea. I will keep those with have more metallic scales – the ones that have more than half of their body covered with metallic scales. This is the first priority. Then I will choose the ones with more black / purple color among them.

Any suggestion is welcome. I will update this project in some more months.