I am really enchanted by Cow Ranchu. Producing one good quality after several years of effort cannot be considered as a success. I might need new ammunitions. Gladly, a seller friend (Kwan Goldfish, Jakarta) imported several beautiful Cow Ranchu several months ago. I observed that they have different characters from mine. I quickly bought some of them. I selected the fishes with least red pigmentation since I could not find any without any red color. I also chose the ones with minimal black patches. Well, this is a personal preference. I believe the black color will grow.
This is the suspected male.
The next one below is a female. She does not lay eggs yet.
And the last one is surprisingly productive. She lays eggs from the start. The eggs are not many, and some are infertile. I guess this is the first time for her to lay eggs. She is a bit too young. I expect better result from her in the coming weeks. I mated her with my current male Cow Ranchu (from Diary #15) since the male sibling does not produce enough sperm yet. Probably he is still very young.
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.
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:
This is the tail when swimming
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?
This is 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.
This is Helen doing her flips
I am enthusiastic to see the results 😊 Perhaps my Dancing Queen will evolve into Oranda with Dancing Queen tail shape.
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):
Before
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.
Before
After
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 😊
One type of goldfish that I avoided in the twenty years of my breeding activity is the Pearlscale. Not because I dislike them. I just think they are hard to keep. In my three attempts to keep them (and to breed them once), all of them ended up developing bubble-like disease in their bodies. I do not know what disease it is. I do not find such disease in other goldfish varieties. The fishes that developed that bubble seemed to suffer. My heart ached when I saw them that way. That is the reason I avoided breeding Pearlscale.
But Pearlscale was always in my heart. I remembered my childhood day when I had a Pearlscale in my tank. At that time, the Pearlscale was of the old style. It had a long flowing tail. This type is hard to find nowadays in my country. The market is now dominated by the Mutiara Tikus (translated as Mouse Pearlscale, developed by the Malaysian with the round body, sharp pointed head like a mouse, and short tail features). As a boy, I loved to watch my Pearlscale until I fell asleep in front of the tank. That fish became the model for my first goldfish childhood drawing.
In my teenager, my uncle gave me his giant Pearlscale. I could remember vividly, it was as big as a small-sized coconut, larger than a tennis ball! I put the fish in my pond only to find it floating dead the next morning. My happiness turned into sorrow. Concerning the size, I do not know if it was an exaggerated memory or if it was really that big. But it was always my desire to grow a Pearlscale someday towards that size. I never succeed to achieve it with all my Pearlscale during my life up to now.
My breeding projects so far was to experiment with unique varieties or color. I made sketches of new goldfish types. One of my imagination was to create a round-belly goldfish, such as Pearlscale, but without the Pearlscale. So it was just a round fish with metallic scale – a metallic ball. But it is a project that I never start. Just a wild imagination. Yet this shows that Pearlscale is always close to my heart.
Last year, out of nowhere, I found several Pearlscale in my offspring.
I was surprised. I did not keep Pearlscale for so long already, so there was no Pearlscale genetics in my fishes. I did not intend to breed any. How come they suddenly appeared in my collection?
These Pearlscale was a natural mutation from the Tosakin – Butterfly cross which I had done for several years. I did a lot of inbreeding and backcross breeding with Tosakin and Butterfly. For many generations, they never yielded Pearlscale, which was normal. I do not know why, suddenly there was a whole batch that turned to round belly, some with obvious pearlscale, some not so obvious. Well, I found this weird. But I welcome them.
So, now, I have Pearlscale again as a gift from heaven. Never ask, but I receive. And they are different from the Pearlscale in the market. The popular Pearlscale is transparent scale type. Mine is metallic scale type – a variant seldom seen nowadays. The popular one is the short tail variant. Mine is towards the butterfly tail type. They are unique. I am happy with them. Since they are metallic scale, the Pearls are not so eye-catching. Some doesn’t even seem to have the protruding scales – and this will be my imagination come to reality without any effort! And more, they do not seem to develop the bubble disease!
From the offsprings, only four I found to be vigorous. The rest were weak or stunted. From this four, only one is male (the grey one).
I still do not know if they can produce true. Will their offspring be just normal butterfly without the telescope eye? Or will they become true metallic Pearlscale with butterfly tail? Or will they be the Steel Ball of my imagination? The first mating attempt produce infertile eggs. The second attempt produce less than ten hatchlings. This morning they breed for the third time, and hopefully produce a better result. Let’s wait for the updates!
Here are the four metallic Pearlscale with (semi) butterfly tail:
This is the update of my Purple Oranda Project. The aim of the project is to improve the quality of my Purple Oranda. The quality of my previous Purple Oranda was skinny fish with minimal headgrowth and ordinary tail. On January this year, I started to cross it with a bulkier Red (Orange) Oranda that has a better headgrowth and the so called rose-tail, which I called my Basic Material. Since the Purple Color is recessive to the Red color, the offspring are either red (orange) or red-white (orange-white) in their phenotype. The F1 show improved body, headgrowth, and tail quality. But the quality is not uniform as will be seen in the pictures below. The Basic Material quality has not been achieved at this stage.
The current results are fast growing. I moved them outdoor last week to see if they were ready to mate. I am a bit worried that I cannot see any visible female when I inspect them. I can see some males with white particles on the pectoral fins. But I do not see any protruding anal in the rest of the fish without the white particles. I do not know if they are immature males, or females, or infertile fish.
The current state does not produce Purple Color yet. My main strategy to produce an improved Purple color is to mate F1 x F1. Yet, the worry I mention above might be a hindrance. For the back up strategy, I still keep a productive female from my previous Purple Oranda. I can mate her with the F1. But this move might decrease the quality I have seen in the F1. Well, at least I still have the back up plan intact. In the next six months or less I might be able to update the results.
This is the productive female from the previous breed. Notice that the body tends to be slim, the headgrowth is minimal, and the tail shape is ordinary. It is considered a poor quality Oranda. But the color is beautiful.
And these are the F1. Notice that the bodies are bulkier, and the headgrowth are better thought still small. The tail show some wrinkles in some of them, as the characteristic of the rose tail (or semi rose-tail). One of them (number 4) shows a large hump as in Ryukin. I think this is an outlier and I will not use it if I do not have to.
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?
My ranchu projects are not as well planned as the oranda projects. For several years I have worked with blue, brown, and purple ranchu. I develop them from scratch. I got my blue ranchu from the panda moor x ranchu. My brown ranchu came from chocolate pompom x ranchu. And my purple ranchu was a cross between the blue and the brown ranchu. It took years for me to get those colors into the decent ranchu shape. But until now, I have not had a clear vision of how to develop my line’s basic ranchu shape.
The oranda projects consume a lot of my space. It is the fate of a city breeder like me to work with limited space. I must think of the management of my tubs in a daily basis: moving fishes around from tubs to tubs, maintaining a manageable hatching size, culling as early as possible in the strictest way I can. With this lack of vision and space in developing my ranchu line, I plan to reduce my activity in ranchu projects for now. I will only breed just to make sure they are not extinct from my collection. By doing this, I can save my space. The good thing is that I can always put ranchu in the same tubs / ponds with oranda without the risk of losing track of the lineage. I cannot do this for the hatches between semi brown, semi blue, semi purple, and semi yellow oranda. They all will mutate into the same color (namely red, red-white, or wild color). They must be kept in separate tubs to keep track of which one is which.
Hopefully later on I will be able to develop my own ranchu line’s shape. But for now, they are not my priority.
Actually, there were two main sub projects in my ranchu planning. They were the cow ranchu and the tricolor ranchu.
Last year I was resolved to breed the cow ranchu. I have acquired at least three different line associated with cow ranchu from China (one from De Quan farm, one from Pan Xi, and one from unknown). I even mixed them with my blue and purple metallic scale ranchu. Yet, the results are far from satisfying. I have bred them several times with similar results. Most of the offspring have no anal fins. The rest have horrible back shape. Sometimes I got only one or two decent shape from a batch. The surviving ones mostly become either calicos or casper (the full transparent white fish).
Right now, I revise my cow ranchu project. First, my aim is not to acquire cow ranchu offspring anymore. I revise my aim into producing my calico ranchu line instead of cow ranchu line. So, I will cross whatever transparent scale I have, be it cow ranchu, calico, or a mix with other ranchu type. I will not keep track of the lineage of the offspring anymore. And later on, I will see if there is a good body shape and color from my mix collection that I can develop into my own transparent scale ranchu line. Just surrender myself to the force of randomness. Second, I will sort of postpone this project for later. Right now, I will just breed them only when I have space and time, and to collect few decent fishes from each batch. I will raise them together with my oranda. So, this project will not occupy a lot of my space and energy for now. Hopefully I will have some beauties to work with later on.
It seems that in life, one must choose one’s priority. One cannot have everything, at least in the same time. So, I think I am correct in postponing the priority of my ranchu projects for now to concentrate on my oranda.
The second sub project was the tricolor metallic scale ranchu. I was trying to develop this kind of ranchu from my tricolor goosehead oranda. I have made several attempts for some generations, with no success. I think failure is part of a breeder’s life. But I am still trying and learning from my mistakes. I am still restarting again and again.
Right now, I have three batches of different cross between the tricolor oranda (and also her cross) and ranchu. I dedicated three large ponds for the offspring (roughly 10 weeks old now). They are space-consuming and this project is far from being successful. I am still watching how the offspring turn up (whether they will carry the tricolor genetics or not) and thinking of another way of doing this in case the current project fails.
This sub project of tricolor ranchu is so dear to me. I can postpone the blue, brown, purple, and cow ranchu projects, but not this one.
hermantogoldfish 