The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (24)

Update on Brown Oranda Project.

Among my Blue, Purple, and Brown projects, the Brown is the least successful from the start. But there are two developments I can report.

First, I manage to secure my old brown oranda line. So, basically, there is no upgrade yet but I do not lose the seed. I keep two of them. One has a good brown color, another one turns orange with some brown marking remains. The rest of the sibling are either defected or turning into orange fish, so I do not keep them.

Both of them have neat fins. The body shape is not bad, but not stout enough. The headgrowth is still minimal. I do not plan to breed them purely, so I mate the brown one with my purple oranda. The cross between brown and purple always produces both color types, so I will always have the brown without the need to breed brown x brown. I do not see the need to use the second fish in my breeding project. After doing the cross (brown x purple), I plan to let go both of them.

Second, when I breed Helen with her sibling in order to create purple oranda (Helen and her sibling are semi purple oranda), I get several brown color alongside the purple. So, without using my old line of brown oranda, I can get a new line of brown oranda. They are still young right now, I haven’t taken any picture of them. They seem to have different character from my old line. Yet, I still face the same problem of them turning into orange color. They left me with few decent brown color.

So, although my brown oranda breeding project was not successful in the beginning, I am lucky enough to get two different lines of brown oranda right now which I can use to continue the project.

Thank you for reading.

Brown Oranda, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (18)

One unsuccessful attempt in the beginning of this year was the Brown Oranda project. Gladly I have the opportunity to resume the endeavor right now. I still keep few offspring from my original brown oranda line as a back up. One of these have matured into a charming male ready to mate.

This male is not perfect. There is a defect in its tail where the left and right upper lobes do not align well. The left tail is higher than the right one. The body is a bit slim, and one of the aim in this improvement project is to create a more stout body. The headgrowth is still minimalist. Yet he is very photogenic. I cannot help to post his many beautiful pose for us to enjoy.

What I learn about the brown color is that there is a spectrum in the color. There is the dull brown color which is almost undifferentiable from the wild color. Well, most of the brown color look grey when they are in the pale state, such as after being medicated. But they will turn darker into brown color. The one that can only achieve dull color closer to the wild color is not a good fish. There is also the dark brown color, which is nice. But my favorite is the brown color that resembles tea color such as this male. For me, it is the best.

Let us enjoy this guy:

This pair this male with Helen. This has taken place several weeks ago, and now the offspring is already two centimeter in size. In my prediction, some of the offspring will have stout body like Helen the mother. Most will have beautiful tail since both parents have good tail though in a different style. But the headgrowth will still be minimalist since both parents are like that.

How about the color? Yes, Helen is a red fish in its phenotype. But she carries 50% of purple color genetics. So, Helen is a semi-purple goldfish. We need to remember that purple is a color that emerges from the crossing between brown and blue. So, when the purple genetics meets the brown genetics, I will directly get some brown in the offspring.

When the eggs hatched, they can be distinguished into two color: the dark one and the light one. I am sorry I do not take their picture. The dark one is just like the usual fry which will turn into wild / red color. The light one will turn into brown or purple – they can be distinguished at such an early state but this is very hard to do. So, I just separate the light ones from the dark ones at day 1 after they can swim. Why do I need to separate them so early? Because the light one is weaker. Most of them cannot compete with the dark one for food, resulting in malnutrition and stunted growth. Separating them as early as possible will let the light colored fry to develop better. I cull out the darker ones at this stage.

Will I have a good tea-colored offspring? This is hard to predict. In my experience, such a crossing sometimes creates a weak brown color where the fish looses the melanin totally. The fish turns into a complete orange color. If this happens, it will be a set back to the project. Some turns into brown color with the spectrum ranging from the pale / dull ones, the tea-colored ones, and the deep brown ones. There is a special case where the fish turns into a brown and orange fish (two colors) or a complete orange color but then the melanin grows. So, instead of loosing the brown color, the fish regains it and stay in a pleasing two tones color of brown and orange. This is a desirable result.

The pictures below are from my old files (2018). Pardon the bad photography. These pictures illustrate the transformation of the special case where the brown color grew.

The end.

Blue Oranda, Purple goldfish, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (12)

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):

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.

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 😊

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (11)

I have refined my breeding strategy.

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.

Thank you for reading 😊

Brown Oranda

It all started with some chocolate pompom I bought from China. The brown color captivated my attention. Most of them had orange fluffy nostrils to make them adorable. To my knowledge so far, chocolate color like this was rarely found in other goldfish variety. Well, I saw a brown butterfly sometimes on the internet, but I have never seen one alive. I remembered seeing a brown oranda nicknamed chakin in an encyclopedia I had during my childhood. But I cannot find one live specimen of chakin (teh-kin, or tea-kin, the tea colored goldfish) here in Indonesia. Even the chocolate pompom had to be imported from China. I was entertaining a project to recreate brown oranda from this chocolate pompom I had.

This is one chocolate pompom I bred from the imported parents. I had many of this several years ago.

I crossed it with an oranda. I am sorry I forget about an important fact regarding this matter. I could not recall whether I used a common oranda or a redcap oranda for this cross. The result was all orange goldfish, with small head growth, and the small pompom in some. Those were my transition fish. I did not bother to take a picture of them.

Then I inbred those transition fish to get the desired result. I chose the few brown colored offspring and mated them with oranda again to improve the oranda characteristic. Once again, I got all orange color, but this time, they were decent oranda, with no or insignificant pompom. My final result should come from inbreeding them.

And yes, I got what I wanted! The brown oranda! From the start, I picked up the fry which showed light brown color right after they hatched. I grew them up. Yet, to my disappointment, only one remained brown until maturity. The rest turned into orange.

I mated this only brown with its orange sibling. The hatchlings were all brown in the beginning. And only two remained brown until now. I still keep them and now they are roughly 20 cm long with no hint of turning into brown. Unfortunately, both of them are male. All the female has turned orange. Below is one of current brown oranda I had, which I consider as my throphy.

One strange phenomenon is this. Actually, there was a third male brown oranda, which slowly turned into orange. It retained less than 10 percent of its brown color. I was about to cull it out. Yet, I did not know how, it started to regain its brown color. This is one of the phenomenon I call the reverse demelanization. I managed to take the picture when it regained its brown color after being almost all orange:

At first, I thought the increasing brown color might due to stress. If that is the case, the brown color will be temporary. But, it continued to grow to cover the whole body of the fish, leaving out only its cap. It grew into a beautiful fish: a brown red cap, if I may say! And then the reversing process stopped. Until today the fish is still alive, and has been almost a year in this state of pattern!

Beautiful, isn’t it?

Any explanation?

That is my project to recreate the brown oranda. I think the project is finished. The only thing left is to multiply them, and to get the market to appreciate them.

Have a good day!

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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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 🙂

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.

20150811_061647

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!

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.

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 🙂

Purple goldfish

Purple goldfish update on July, 2015

The above picture is the same purple goldfish in a lighter and darker background. This color is distinguishable from the blue and chocolate below:

Blue goldfish

Chocolate goldfish

The pictures below show the differences between purple and blue

and this shows the difference between purple and chocolate

The picture below shows the fishes with respective colors from left: purple, green, blue and brown

Below are the highlights

Blue scale on top, purple scale below

Purple scale on top, chocolate scale below

So far I think I have succeeded in producing purple goldfish, or purplish one, or any other name differentiable from blue and brown (chocolate). At this point, I think I can wrap up this project and consider it done. What remains is to try the same project again but with different type of fish. What I have in mind is ranchu. I would like to create purple ranchu. But first, I need to create the chocolate ranchu, which is still my ongoing project. It will be a challenging project!

There is another observation coming from this purple goldfish which I am not ready to share yet. Let see for another year or more if this observation really yields something interesting.

Have a good day!

hermantogoldfish

My projects on Goldfish

Tag Archives: brown

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (24)

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (18)

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (12)

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (11)

Brown Oranda

Brown Panda Ranchu

Final Chapter on Purple Ranchu Project

Updates on purple goldfish (Dec 11th, 2015)

What color is this?

Purple goldfish update on July, 2015