Purple goldfish

Final Chapter on Purple Ranchu Project

I think I have come to the final stage of my project on purple goldfish. Starting with the report by Shisan C. Chen as my inspiration, I am finally able to create the purple ranchu. I called the color purple, since I heard that term being used when I was young and naive in goldfish breeding. Shisan C. Chen did not use that term. He just said that it is an intermediate color between brown and blue. I remembered my heart yearned for a more definite description or picture, “what sort of color is that? I would like so much to see it!”

In doing this project, I learned that there are two kinds of brown color in goldfish, and they are genetically different. I am sorry I cannot speak in a more scientific term since my training in genetics is very limited. But I know from my observation that when the two different brown are mated with blue, the result is totally different. I will not elaborate more on this since I have written about it several times on this blog.

So, this is the result:

Left side view:

Yes, it has brown stain, to make it a purple and brown ranchu. Some friends prefer to use the koi terminology to address this breed and call it ochiba ranchu. Yes, the head and perhaps the body could still be improved. I have focused much on the color and sort of neglecting the body conformation. But, for the color experiment, this is final.

Right side view:

Less brown stain on the right side views to make it a decent purple. I know for most people who are not familiar with this project, it is hard to differentiate this purple color with blue. So, let me give some comparison picture.

Comparison between purple and blue:

Yes, the purple has a reddish color compared to the blue.

Comparison between purple, blue and brown:

Hopefully, this project will be useful for the coming generation of goldfish breeders and hobbyist. Thank you for all the motivational support for this project. It is finished now 🙂

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dancing queen

The Dancing Queen

Years before, when tosakin was rare in my country, I was lucky to have some. Yet, the breeding of them was not successful. As the fishes got older, I got worried about losing them with no offspring. In my desperation, I crossed the male tosakin with a common tosa in the hope of getting some tosakin in the offspring. Tosa is the name Indonesian give to a long-tail ryukin-like fish with no hump. At that time, my understanding of breeding was still rudimentary. I did not know that to have a decent tosakin in F1 was hoping too much. I didn’t even plan for crossing back to the parent, since the parent was too old, already. I kept the offspring until they mature. I was disappointed not to get the tosakin I wanted. Yet, I saw some of them developing beautiful tails. I observed them from the top viewing perspective since I put them in the pond. They had long tails, splitted in the middle, with large tosakin flips. Yet, the tail collapsed compared to tosakin. Not even close to a decent tosakin. As I observed them, I marveled at them. One thing that captured my attention was the movement of the tail. The tail could collapse at one time, but could open up at another. The flips could play to the right and left alternately. The movement was totally different from tosakin. I got an impression that the movement was like dancing. As I observed them further from the side-view, my impression was confirmed. The tail movement was unique. It was beautiful. Yet, at that time, I dared not step outside the standard. They were not tosakin. They were not ryukin. They were not even common tosa! They were nothing of value! So, at last, I considered them as a failed tosakin. I discarded them.

As my confidence to step out of the standard grew, I began to consider them again. I remembered how beautiful was the movement of the tail. For the last years, I kept on thinking of reviving them again. I know goldfish is valued for its form and shape. Some, like me, still value its color. The high appreciation also values the elegant movement of the fish. But, I have never heard the appreciation talks about the movement of the tail. I could be wrong, though. But, as far as I know, I have never heard of it. So, if I want to revive that breed, with the movement of the tail as the highlight, I need to create a new category. Yes, the breed can be called a side-view tosakin. But, I do not feel good about it. I tend to give it the name of the dancing queen.

I do not know how the hobbyists will respond to this variety. I do not really care, actually. I will still breed them and observe how far can its potential be. Of course, I will be glad if people will one day appreciate it.

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Purple goldfish

Purple and Brown

So far, my purple goldfish achieves satisfying results in pompom goldfish type. One of the results is the purple with brown stains, or in the koi terminology is known as ochiba.

Perhaps the brown stains are more desirable than the plain purple one. The stains create an interesting nuance, provided that the stains cover less than half the body.

As an overview, now we know how this color comes from. This color will appear in the F2 between blue and brown (orange based, as in brown pompom). The cross will yield few purple colored goldfish. If this purple color develops white color, then it can become brown and white. As the white color appears, the purple color will intensify and look like brown – yielding a brown and white goldfish. Some will eventually lose all the purple or brown color and become totally white / red and white. Some purple fishes do not develop white color, it will stay that way till the end. Some have brown stains like this, becoming this ochiba goldfish.

I tried to cross my purple goldfish with redcap oranda, in the hope that in its F2 I will get purple oranda. But the result is disappointing. I am sorry I forgot what happened with the results, but I remember to call off the project to start it again one day.

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Yellow goldfish

Yellow Goldfish 2017

It has been a year since my last update. Just to review the project, I have bought some yellow commets. I crossed them with my double tail goldfish. I thought the double tail was of yellow color. Later on, the fish turned into mandarin orange color, and the eyes turned into strange color (perhaps albino). I did not documented it well, so I cannot provide any picture. Anyway, it came from the red white double tail goldfish. So, I will consider the gene as plain red / red white goldfish.

The result of the cross was 100 percent orange (red / red white), and 100 percent single tail. No yellow appeared. And no double tail at all. Some of the tail are long, some are short. Here they are:

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As they matured, I did F1 x F1. The results are varied. I collect 2 batches of them. Here are the stats:

Batch 1:

Total 77 offspring. Single tail are 61 (79.2%). Double tail are 16 (20.8%). I can easily separate the single from the double early without the need to wait for the mutation process. However, some of them did not survive along the way. The survivor are 73. The desired yellow double tail are only 3 (4.1%). Orange double tail are 11 (15.1%). Yellow single tail are 14 (19.2%). Orange single tail are 45 (61.6%). So, the desired yellow double tail are only 3 pieces. Two of them are defect. That means, I keep only 1 from this batch.

Batch 2:

Total 541 offspring. Single tail are 432 (79.8%). Double tail  are 109 (20.2%). The stats can be said as the same as that of batch 1. The survivor are only 287. Most of them are stunted and did not survive. From the survivor, the desired yellow double tail are 21 (7.3%). Orange double tail are 55 (19.2%). Yellow single tail are 57 (19.9%). Orange single tail are 154 (53.6%).  From the  21 desired yellow double tail, 12 are defect. So I keep 9 desired results.

Here are some pictures to compare the yellow double tail and orange double tail. Pardon me for the bad pictures.

What type of goldfish are these yellow ones? They do not belong to the popular category such as ryukin, oranda or ranchu. They looks like wakin, perhaps with smaller body and longer tail. Actually, this is my regret. I think I should use a more popular type to cross with the yellow commet from the start. Anyway, it already happens. I need to decide what to do next. Shall I breed them just to get more uncategorized yellow goldfish? Or shall I cross them with more popular type? Perhaps I can produce yellow oranda, yellow ryukin, yellow pompom, or just yellow wakin. I will decide later.

 

 

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Yellow goldfish

Big Progress on Yellow

It has been sometimes I dream of yellow goldfish. It all started when I accidentally acquired a yellow tosakin. I was unaware at that time if the color was yellow. I thought it was just a pale fish due to the lack of sunlight.

I did make a cross between that yellow tosakin and a wakin, as part of my another project. Most of the offspring were red – really deep red – in color. But few show different color. It took a while for me to realize that they were yellow and mandarin orange color. I was inspired to create more of them. But unfortunately, there were too few of them. Usually from the same batch, all of the yellow were of the same sex. And most of the female were infertile. What to do?

This is my yellow female infertile goldfish

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my semi lemon

I remembered from my last trip to Japan, I saw that Japan has yellow commets. I also heard that they are common in America, Israel, and some more parts of the world. But Indonesia has none. So I planned to import some yellow commets from Japan. Thanks to Limas who made it possible. I did not have any yellow male. I only had some mandarin orange male fish. So I planned to breed my male mandarin orange goldfish with female commets from Japan.

These are what I call the mandarin orange:

mandarin orange

Upon the arrival of the yellow commets, I noticed that the yellow color was a bit different from my yellow goldfish. The commets were more like lemon color. My yellow goldfish had a bit of orange flavor in it, though I will still consider it yellow.

This is the comparison:

lemon cross

Alas, the yellow commets did not lay any eggs yet, though it has been months since I bought them. But the BIG SURPRISE is that, yesterday, my infertile yellow female suddenly laid eggs! And lots of them. I was tempted several times to let go the fish. Glad I did not do it. It has been a year or more without any eggs, but suddenly it laid the eggs yesterday. I matched her with the male lemons from Japan. And I am very enthusiastic to see the result.

If the yellow goldfish project was in jeopardy from the start, now I begin to see a big hope. And from this, there is a possibility to create yellow oranda, and even yellow ranchu in the future. Certainly this will enrich the goldfish diversity. Yellow goldfish will not be limited to yellow commets anymore 🙂

Wish me the best!

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Purple goldfish

Updates on purple goldfish (Dec 11th, 2015)

As an overview, I was repeating the classic experiment by Shishan C. Chen. The experiment was crossing a blue metallic scale goldfish with a chocolate metallic scale goldfish. My slight modification was that I use the panda metallic scale goldfish instead of blue, noting that panda and blue color has a close relationship. I crossed a panda tosa with a chocolate pompom. I got the panda tosa from crossing panda telescope eyes (which is available in the market) with blue oranda.

The F1 was wild in color. Some turned into wild and orange, and some turned into totally orange color. No blue, no panda, no chocolate appeared at this stage. All have small pompom balls. Interestingly, their size became giants! I took my lesson that crossing far related types of goldfish may trigger the production of large sizes. (This inspires the possibility of doing projects on giant sized goldfish!)

This is the picture of the F1. Picture was taken 5 months ago, and the fishes have grown larger since. The bowl is 40cm in diameter.

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Then I did F1 x F1. The results were amazing! I got:

1st category: blue, blue-white combination (or we call it panda) and white (as the blue color totally disappeared)

2nd category: chocolate, chocolate-orange combination, and orange

3rd category: purple (the color in between blue and chocolate), chocolate-white combination (!), and white (as the chocolate color totally disappeared)

4th category: wild color

The shape were all pompom goldfishes. Some with large pompom balls, some with small ones.

I got rid of the wild color early. (And now I regret it, since I would like to know whether it can be used to create red-white pompom combination or not). So, I focused on in-breeding those 3 categories. My utmost desire was to breed and stabilizes the chocolate-white combination, since it is a rarer color compared to the panda. Unfortunately, they do not lay eggs till now even when all the other categories have spawned. My project of creating chocolate-white is in jeopardy! It is not funny to start all over again from the beginning.

The first pair to spawn was the panda. I am happy, since panda pompom is nowhere to be seen nowadays. I was thinking that these panda will produce 100 percent genuine panda color. That is what happen when I crossed panda color with red-white. When I crossed panda with red-white, the F1 was red-white/red. The F2 yield roughly 25 percent of panda. And when I crossed these panda with its panda sibling, the result was 100 percent panda / blue. So, I was hoping the same to happen in this project. Interestingly, the result is different!

Panda color produced from the cross between panda and chocolate, when mated with its panda sibling, does not only yield panda / blue color, but also purple / chocolate-white color in small percentage! I think this is an important matter. It needs someone knowledgeable in genetics to explain this. I do not have that expertise.

These are the chocolate-white goldfish aged roughly three months old. Some have turned totally white. These are the ones that still retain the chocolate color. Aren’t they lovely?

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First, I am glad that I do not need to rely on my 3rd category that do not spawn till now. I can still get chocolate-white combination from the panda pair.

Second, let me make clear of the relationship between purple and chocolate-white. For the start, it is better to understand that there are three color involved here: blue, chocolate and purple. Shishan Chen has discussed the difference between them. It involves the black pigmen, the red pigmen, their combination and distribution. Though I do really want to understand more about it and what involves that create the difference between blue and black, chocolate and red, they are not really my stuffs. (I am too stupid for that.) It is enough for me to know that purple is a color between blue and chocolate.

It is also important to understand that there are “base” color in goldfish. I have never read about this. This is my own terminology, that will need help from friends who understand more. This “base” color is what makes the difference betwen black and blue, and between chocolate pompom and purple. Let me explain. In the case of black and blue, we know that differences happen in the melanin pigment. Black ranchu has melanin pigment, so also blue ranchu. But somehow, that same pigment behaves differently in those two. One factor is the different pigment distribution. Is it the only factor involved? I do not think so. But I cannot say anymore about this. There is a second important differentiation between the black and blue, and I want to draw the attention to this. Their “base” color is different. In black ranchu, if the black color fades, we will see an orange color. That is what I mean by base color. Even in Thai black ranchu where the black color does not fade, if we try to scratch the black skin, we will see the orange color underneath the black coat. But in blue color, if the black (or blue) pigment fades, what we will see is white color. So, this is the base color of blue fish. In black ranchu, as the melanin fades, we will have black-gold color (or black-orange), while in blue ranchu, as the melanin fades, we will have black-white color (or panda). So, the base color is different.

The relationship between chocolate pompom and purple pompom has something to do with this “base” color. The base color of chocolate pompom is orange. That’s why, when the chocolate color fades, we will see the orange as the base color. The fish can turn into chocolate-orange,or totally orange fish. We witness the same behavior with black and black-gold fish. In purple goldfish, the base is not orange, but white! So, when the purplish color fades, the fish will have purple-white color combination. And in this kind of combination, the purple color will be more intense, the pigmen distribution will be thicker, and the purple will look like chocolate. That is why I call the purple-white color combination as the chocolate-white. It is the same case with panda, where the blue-white combination is called black-white since the blue is getting thicker and looking like black.

This answers my second point, that is about the relationship between purple and chocolate-white. When the purple color does not fade, the fish will stay purplish. When the purple fades, the fish will become chocolate-white, and some will even turn into totally white.

Third, there seems to be several spectrum of chocolate color in the chocolate-white combination. I am still not sure about this. I am not sure of whether they are worthy to be identified separately.

Fourth, the good news is, when I crossed chocolate pompom with chocolate pompom resulted from this project, the result is not 100 percent chocolate, either! There are purple color also! The same behavior I examined from crossing panda with panda from this project.

Fifth, I have not had chance to cross purple with purple, or purple-white with purple-white. If I do this, will the result yield several panda and chocolate also, or will they be 100 percent purple and purple-white?

Sixth, it will be nice to create purple-white ranchu! A project that is enough to occupy my time for several years ahead!

 

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Yellow goldfish

Update on Yellow Goldfish (Sept 19th, 2015)

Yellow goldfish is not common in Indonesia. Though it is common in Japan and America, it cannot be found in Indonesia. I mentioned before that it is a lucky thing to see one showed up in my offspring. However, I can only find a single yellow one in one batch. In another batch, it is between orange and yellow, which I am sure it is carrying the yellow genetics. But all of them are female. The best yellow might be sterile, since it does not show any sign of laying eggs though it is almost one year old. The siblings are red or red white in color. So, there is no other way than to cross the yellowish orange one with a red one.

This is the result. I get three yellowish orange. The rest are deep red or red white. These yellowish orange, or the color between orange and yellow, have yellow eyes. Another bad luck, all of them are male. So, if the mother is still productive, I will mate them back with the mother, hoping that some yield will be yellow.

This is a picture of one red and one yellowish orange from the same batch. One might be tempted to think that the yellowish orange one is an underdeveloped color, which might become as red as the other one if being feed with color enhancer. Well, I do not feed them color enhancer. But I can assure us that they are from the same batch, and they receive the same treatment and living in the same pond. In the pond with dark background, the color difference is more differentiable. Enjoy.

tones of red

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Purple goldfish

The difference between blue and purple

One of my concern is that the purple color is hard to differentiate from the blue color. My aim of posting these pictures is to show that those two colors are indeed differentiable. When being put side by side with chocolate / brown, the purple will look like blue. But when being put side by side with blue, the purple look like brown. So, purple is indeed a color spectrum between the blue and the brown, and differentiable from the two. The pictures below show the difference between blue and purple. I hope it is clear which one is which 🙂 Have a good day.

purple and blue 2

purple and blue 1

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Purple goldfish

Update on purple goldfish, September 16th, 2015

Telescope eyes occur in my breed once and a while, though I have never intended to breed them. These three telescope eyes are from one batch, from the same parent, yet they differ widely in their color. The left one is a panda. The middle one is the purple goldfish – I think it is still rare, and perhaps the only one in Indonesia currently. Hopefully this pose highlights the purple color from the rest. The right one is the chocolate with some beautiful stain of orange, also a rarity, I think. Enjoy,

colorful telescopes

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Purple goldfish

What color is this?

This is the most unique color I find in this purple goldfish project. It started as purple fish. But then it develops white coloration. The purple color becomes darker, to make it look like light brown. I do not know what to call this combination. Purple and white? Chocolate and white? It surely looks like brown magpie bird to me.

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Many of the purple develop the white color, but most turn into totally white. So, I guess the behavior of this pattern is basically similar to the panda. That means there is a room for stabilizing the pattern through selective breeding.

unfortunately, there is only one with this kind of pattern. I hope the pattern will stay, though it is very probable that it will fade. And the purple goldfish is always the smaller compared to the blue and brown in the same batch.

My plan is to strengthen this pattern and multiply them in the form of pompom goldfish. Next, I would like to develop ranchu in this pattern. Wish me the best 🙂

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