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.
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.
It turns out that I did not write as often as I expected. Now in this holiday season (Ramadhan), I would like to catch up with my diary. For a brief update, I did not do intense breeding activity on March. I slowed down since my facility was fully utilized to raise the offspring from January and February. I redid some unsatisfactory projects on Oranda and Tosakin. My main activity on March was to sort out the result of my topview ranchu projects, and this will be the content of this essay. I also refined my way of culturing daphnia. On April, I had some liberty to breed my side projects such as butterfly, celestial, pearlscale butterfly, and some ranchu. I also had the opportunity to start my next big project to create a celestial butterfly goldfish. I will write more on these in the next occasion.
As I said, I would like to update on my tvr project in this essay. Let me refresh the reader’s memory that this project was started by crossing Wakin and Topview Ranchu. My dream was to create a longer version of Topview Ranchu. The result today is the third generation from that initial crossing. The initial Topview Ranchu being crossed with Wakin was from the Andou line. The result was crossed back again to another Topview Ranchu from the same line. Then I crossed the result back to Topview Ranchu from the Murakami Line.
At this point, I cannot say that I am satisfied with the result. Yet, for sure, I am happy with the progress. The results are varied. Some resemble TVR, but some are arguable. In my opinion, one more crossing to TVR will be needed to finish the project. That is my plan. But I might still inbreed the current result with each other, perhaps to create a slightly different version of TVR. I understand that I will have little support to take this “out of tune” project. Yet, I love to be different.
These are some of the best results so far. Do enjoy.
I try to take better pictures of my tosakin this morning. I realize that it is a bit hard to get a clear view of red-white tosakin in a white bowl. I wish I had a black one. Anyway, enjoy the pics.
This is the only productive female tosakin I have right now. She is an offspring of my Nagoya tosakin and my own tosakin line. She has a defect on the dorsal fin, namely, the dorsal fin does not cover the whole backbone.This is the male tosakin I paired with the red-white female above. He is also a young tosakin.These are the offspring of the two above, approximately three weeks old. They were many, but I culled out a lot since the flatness of the middle tail (as seen from side-view is not desirable. The angle of the tail is too upward. I also expect that some of the offspring will become all white since both parents are dominantly white. This is a feature I want to correct in the other pairing.This is the original tosakin I bought from Nagoya, Japan. The growth in the head is a sign of his old age (more than two years old). He is the uncle of the two red-white tosakin above.This is the offspring of the Nagoya tosakin and the redwhite female. So, this is a marriage between uncle and niece. The angle of the middle tail (as seen from side-view) looks better. And to me, they look more uniform. Promising. I think if I still have the chance, this is the pair I need to breed again.This is a male grey tosakin, as a sibling to the two red-white tosakin above. My own previous tosakin line (as one of the ancestor of the two red-white and this grey) was a grey thailand tosakin, so it is not surprising to get grey fishes in the descendants. I mated this grey with the red-white female also. i cannot produce the picture of the offspring since they are still very small (less than two weeks old).This is my male improved flysakin (a cross between tosakin and butterfly) that has been crossed back to tosakin. The flips are definitely tosakin. The thousand rays in the tail are also the trait of tosakin. But the middle tail is still split, and the whole tail looks soft (feasible only when they are swimming). I also pair this with the female red-white tosakin in the hope to create a tosakin with longer tail as my line’s uniqueness. These are the two fishes with intense red coloration that I would like to be the characteristic of my tosakin line also. My friend and me call these two the two Beni, since Beni is a koi terminology to refer to the deep red coloration (if I am not mistaken). I already have the offspring of these two Beni with my red-white female tosakin. It will still be a long process to create a true tosakin from this cross.These two are fertile female improved flysakin. The tail characteristics vary from soft to hard, from medium size to long. Yet, we can see a resemblance of tosakin in them. I mated these two with the original Nagoya.
If I was occupied with Oranda breeding in January, I was busy with Tosakin breeding in February.
Tosakin is very rare in Indonesia. Over the past decade, several people tried to breed it, some with no success, some with a temporary success but then discontinue for unknown reason. I was among those who passionately try to breed tosakin with no long-term success. Somehow the original line that I bought eventually being wiped out, and I must wait for another opportunity to acquire tosakin again. This happened several times in my breeding history.
About five years ago, I bought five tosakin from Thailand through a friend. Four of them could not make it. I was left with one grey tosakin. It is a male, and indeed, a beautiful one. My friend and me call him Grey. I had no choice but to breed him with Butterfly goldfish. The offspring was unique with many tail variation in-between tosakin and butterfly. We called the offspring the Flysakin (Butterfly – Tosakin). I did two or three generation backcrossing of flysakin to Grey, since this guy lived a long time. The backcrossing ended up with low quality tosakin that I did not proud of. None was close to the quality of Grey. I knew I took a great risk to the genetics health by doing many backcrossing to a single fish for several generation. Then the Grey got very old and a friend cared for him well until his death. I was left with two lines: flysakin (mostly grey) and low-grade tosakin as the descendant of Grey. At this point, the tosakin project became a hopeless case for me. I got used to failure.
Then a new opportunity came two years ago.
My friends and I had the opportunity to buy several baby tosakin from Nagoya, Japan. We were so excited to see the prospect of reviving tosakin in Indonesia. We divided the babies among us and grow them till adulthood. Too bad, it was not easy to breed them. Unlike other goldfish type, it was hard to differentiate between male and female tosakin by examining their anal. And none of them laid eggs in the first year. I prepared my courage to accept the worst: they might be sterile. Fortunately, in the second year, one laid eggs. The sec became obvious at this stage. I had several females with me, but only one laid eggs. I quickly paired her with the siblings. It was a happy moment to have so many tosakin eggs at last. Yet, another disappointment awaited. Almost all of the offspring had defect dorsal fins! I tried to breed her the second time, with the same result. There was something wrong with the genetics. Suspicion mingled with disappointment. But I know anger could not change the situation. I threw all of the offspring and decided to start over. At that moment, I launched three sub projects altogether. I mated the Nagoya with my low grade tosakin (descendant of Grey); I also mated the female Nagoya with my male flyaskin, and my female flysakin with male Nagoya. After executing these projects, the female Nagoya stopped laying eggs forever. What a close call!
Surprisingly, the cross between the Nagoya and my own tosakin produced decent tosakin. They were not extraordinary, but good enough. There were only seven of them, but they made me happy. Concerning the offspring of Nagoya x flysakin, some of them became very close to tosakin: some with long and soft tail (perhaps it still carries the genetics of butterfly) and some with medium and hard tail. Some more had split tails and large flips; they were very beautiful in their own way – I sold them because I did not use them to improve my tosakin project anymore.
This February, these offsprings began to lay eggs.
From the seven tosakin offspring I had, there were four females but only one laid eggs!. My alarm rang aloud. She was not perfect. She had a defect in the dorsal fin. The dorsal fin only covered 80% of the backbone. Yet she was the best shot I had. I could not postpone her breeding since I had no confidence if she would have another breeding season.
The productive female tosakin
So, I mated her with her siblings (two out of the three males from the seven set). I left one male out since its tail was ordinary. Then it occurred to me that pairing her up with his uncle (the male from the original Nagoya set) will be a good option, so I did this in the next occasion. A goldfish usually lays eggs every five days in my place. So, I can have many rounds of breeding in a season. I can pair a single fish with different males. The combinations above already took three rounds of breeding.
The three male tosakin offspring. I used only the red white and the grey.The male original Nagoya tosakin
I did not stop the breeding there. I continued to pair her with another males. Since I did not know how the result would turn out, I thought it was better to pair her with many different males in the hope of having good offspring from at least one of the combinations. In the fourth round of breeding, I mated her with the best of my improved flysakin, that is, the flysakin that had been crossed back to the original Nagoya tosakin line. At this point, I thought I already had sufficient combination of offspring to secure a good result.
But then, temptation creeped.
My goal is not just to breed tosakin, or to create the quality as close as to the original Nagoya. My goal is to create my own line of tosakin, hopefully with clearly defined uniqueness. What I had in mind is to create a tosakin with longer tail and bigger flips (who doesn’t want that?), and a strong red white color. The current productive female tosakin I had was already red and white in coloration. And the red color was not bad. It was already a dream came true. But, among my goldfish collection, I had two fishes with very intense blood red color in a red and white fish. Both were male. One of them was a butterfly, and one was a flysakin. They emerged randomly from my offspring without me remembering the genealogy. I was tempted to pair these two with the female tosakin. I knew the timing was not at its best, since my space were already occupied by so many oranda offspring and tosakin offspring. Could I afford two more projects? Or should I postpone this sub-project to the next breeding season, provided that the female could stay productive? It was risky. I remembered well about her mother stop laying eggs forever. Or could I delay this sub-project until the next generation? Well, would I still have my intense deep red goldfish at that time?
After pondering for a while, I decided to execute the project.
The butterfly with the deep intense deep red coloration and the female tosakin. Notice the slight difference in the intensity of the red color.
I must confess that I made another sub-project in this Tosakin category. Along with the female tosakin being productive, some of the females from my improved flysakin collection also came to age. I mated them with the original male Nagoya line. My reason was that my Nagoya was getting old. There was not much time for him to be productive. And his gene was so important to be paired with the improved flysakin, since this one cross would make my improved flysakin into a complete tosakin. I could not waste this opportunity.
So, I was very busy in breeding this January and February. My space was cramped and I need to exercise strict management to my little city farm. Pray to God that He will grant me success with these two projects. The question is: what will I do in March?
hermantogoldfish 