The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (15)

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.

These are the backups:

dancing queen, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (14)

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:

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?

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.

I am enthusiastic to see the results 😊 Perhaps my Dancing Queen will evolve into Oranda with Dancing Queen tail shape.

statistics

A bit of Stats: transparent x metallic scales

I have crossed metallic scales goldfish with transparent one many times. The offspring consists of both types of scales. But I never counted how many for each of them. Since my concentration was mainly to keep the transparent ones, I just cull out the metallic ones without counting. Now I am curious to know the statistics.

I happen to cross my yellow transparent scale oranda (female – left pic) with my yellow metallic scale oranda (male – right pic):

I quickly realize that I made two mistakes which might affect the accuracy of the result. But it already happened, anyway.

First, the counting will be more accurate if I kept all the offspring from the beginning. I did not do it since I had no intention to count at that time. So, I have done the first culling, which is sorting out one-week-old hatchlings with tail defects (seen from above) and small sizes. Assumptions can be made, whether the number of both types being culled out are the same or the percentage of both types being culled out are the same (as the result I will report shortly), but both assumptions are risky. This is one of the weakness.

Second, I forgot whether the transparent scale fish carries the metallic genetics (a cross between transparent and metallic scale parentage) or it is pure transparent already (a mating between transparent and transparent). I fear this might influence how the result will be interpreted.

Admitting these weaknesses, I counted the offspring when they are about three weeks old. Here are some samples of them (not the total number):

Transparent scales: 73 (53.3%)

Metallic scales: 64 (46.7%)

Looking at these numbers, the transparent scales are slightly more than the metallic scales. But I think the difference is not significant, considering the first mistake. I think it is safe to conclude as a rough breeding guideline that the cross between transparent and metallic scales will yield both types of scales with 50:50 ratio.

cow ranchu

Cow Ranchu Crossing

Cow Ranchu is a variant of the transparent scale ranchu that has black and white color. Sometimes the black pattern can expand. The black comes in large patterns and small dots. Red color might be present in small areas of the body. If the red is too much, it cannot be called cow ranchu anymore. I do not know if it is the International standard name of not, but we Indonesian calls it Cow Ranchu since it resembles the color of black and white cow. This breed was rare before (especially in Indonesia), but it is available recently through imports from Fuzhou, China (if my information is correct). How people come up with this pattern is still a mystery for me. A breeder friend told me once that when he bred them, he got a variety of transparent color ranchu including calicos. So, in his view, the cow is just the offspring of the usual calico which then being separated purposely based on the color. So, it will not breed true. I doubt this explanation. In my understanding, the usual calico does not have the ability to expand its black pigment like this cow ranchu. And the black in calico usually comes in dots, not large patterns or blocks as in this cow ranchu. So, I decided to buy some cows at the end of 2019 with three purposes: first, to breed them to see if they breed true, second, to observe the expansion of the black pigment, and third, to cross them with other colors to see what will happen. Well, the 1st and 2nd purposes was facing hindrances. My first attempt to breed them resulted in so few offsprings. I think I need to breed more of them. And then, three out of five that I bought died, sadly. Gladly, I managed to crossbreed them with the common calico and with the blue metallic scale ranchu. This writing will mainly talk about the crossbreeding result.

These are the five I bought (I show them the left and right side for each):

The first three are the males. And the last two are the females. My favorites are number three and four. Too bad, they are gone. The remaining two are number one and five. I am trying to buy some more to replace them.

Their offspring in my first attempt to breed them was few, and they were weak in quality. Yet, my initial conclusion is that they breed true. Majority of the offsprings were cow ranchu. Few had minor red stains. No calico observed. Yet, I need to confirm this with my next breeding. I could not stand the quality of the offspring, so I culled most of them. I come out with these two left:

The first one has a yellowish stain in the area of its left pectoral fin. The rest are white with black pigment under the skin. The first one also has an outer black pigmen in its pectoral fin. I think they are good specimen to observe whether the black pigment will expand or not. These two are the reason for my initial conclusion that they can breed true.

Next, I mated the cows with these calicos:

I bought them from an importir friend who acquired the parents from China. So far, he has bred them true. I saw myself the offspring in his pond was pretty much similar in color characteristic. I asked for one female and two males. Too bad, he mistakenly sent me all females. Anyway, I could still pair them with my cows.

Here are the results of the cross between the calicos (female) and the cow (male) – after hard culling, ten of them remain:

The quality is far below my standar, so I cull them hard. Even these ten will be culled again after they serve the illustration purpose. (Mostly, my wife’s pupils will adopt them.) The offsprings resulted in different eye type, and different color variation: tiger, calico, sakura, and cow (the last one). I kept the cow one to see the progress of the black pigment.

I also use this blue metallic ranchu which comes from my own previous project to breed with the cows:

And the result of the cross between the blue metallic (female) and the cows are:

cowblue 7

The offspring consists of blue metallic scales and grey metallic scales, but I want to focus on the transparent scale offspring. After much culling due to the low quality, I keep these to represent the range of transparent color emerged from this cross: tiger, calico, and kirin-like ranchu (the last one). Kirin is another variation of transparent color where the dark color and the light color seemed to separate in half. The dark color (purple, blue, grey, black) always dominates the upper part of the body, while the light color (white, yellow, red, orange) is more in the lower part. Actually, a more accurate description I think is that the light color is all over the body in the background, while the dark color exists in the foreground and occupies only the upper part of the body. The dark color usually looks with scales, or looks like a net, while the light color is transparent. Some shiny and big metallic scales are usually seen scattered all over the body.

Comparing the two crossing, it is obvious that there are overlaps: the tiger, calico, and sakura (perhaps some of the calico will turn into sakura when they lost their black pigment, or it will never happen in this cross, I do not know and do not focus on that). But interestingly, the cross between the cow and the calico produces cow-like offspring, where the other cross does not. And the cross between the cow and the blue metallic produces the kirin-like offspring, where the other cross does not. It is a hint, I think, that kirin pattern involves the blue metallic scale in the making. I kept the kirin-like one to see or use in further project.

That’s all that I can report so far. Thank you for reading. Enjoy!

Panda Oranda

Re-melanization process

Some people complain about their black and white goldfish losing their black pigment. This is common in goldfish and the process is called de-melanization process. Well, my late experiment with breeding black and white oranda from Thailand (not from the blue metallic scale, but from the grey metallic scale as I wrote in my last post) shows quite a strong character of melanin (black pigment). The black pigment can reappear or grow. This is different from stress fish which often shows some temporary black pigment which will be gone on several weeks (or months). I am tempted to call this phenomena as re-melanization process. I notice that this changing pattern also happens in koi world in the kumonryu variety.

Well, not all black and white oranda from Thailand shows this characteristics. It just happen that the line on my hand is very strong in this unique character, and it happens in my ponds at least five times (as I noticed), which is quite often compared to my previous twenty years of experience in the goldfish world. I think I should preserve this gene and hopefully introduce it to other goldfish varieties. Below shows two fishes, one had lost all its black pigment and then regained it in just one month, and the other had a growing black pigment in the same time period.

remelanization process 2 mar 2020 remelanization process mar 2020

Panda Oranda

Panda That Humbled me down

Years of my experiment brings me the conclusion that the panda coloration (or the tricolor as its side effect) is actually the blue coloration in metallic scale fish that undergoes demelanization process. That process can happen quickly in certain blue fish, turning it into a totally white fish or red and white one. But it can also happen slowly, even to the point of being halted forever, producing the beautiful panda / tricolor goldfish.

Recently, since 2018, breeders from Thailand storm the market with panda / tricolor oranda which seems to be strong in its coloration. I acquired some and breed them to see if they conformed to my understanding. And what did I find?

The offspring were not blue in color!

They were grey just like the common metallic goldfish!

I raised them to see if they will become panda like their parents. And yes, with mix results, I got several decent panda oranda. The results consist of grey (which does not seem to turn into black nor panda), black, panda, tricolor, and some who loses the melanin totally.

Here are some of the results that I raised until maturity:

DSC_9467 (2)

So, panda does not come from blue fish only. My previous conclusion was wrong. I still does not know how the grey fish can become panda, since the common grey fish (red white fish) cannot do so. Actually, I experience this once a long time ago. But I dismiss it as an exception. Perhaps next time I can find my documentation and write about it. For now, I must humbly admit that there are panda color that does not come from blue fish.

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 🙂

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:

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.

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

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:

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:

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!

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?

20151209_061256 (2)

20151209_061251 (2)

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!

hermantogoldfish

My projects on Goldfish

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