In the beginning of this year, I mentioned the use of an oranda lineage I call my Basic Material. I crossed this line with my purple oranda line to produce Helen (the semi purple oranda). Let me refresh how they look like:
Besides crossing this line with my purple, blue, and brown oranda, I inbred them to keep the pure lineage to anticipate their usage one day. But I detect the saturation in their gene. Minor problems seem to occur in the offspring. Currently I only keep these three males:
In my first impression, they all lack the body stoutness of the parents. But the headgrowth feature is preserved. This headgrowth is important since Helen and her offspring still lacking in headgrowth.
So, several weeks ago I managed to cross Helen with those three musketeers. I am enthusiastic to see how the offspring will appear. There is a rule of thumb that the headgrowth (the front half of the body) tend to follow from the female parent while the rest of the body tend to follow from the male parent. Obviously, I go against this rule of thumb for this project. Anyway, it is just a rule of thumb for me. I never think it as a 100% truth. For the headgrowth, I hope to see a headgrowth larger than Helen’s. For the body, I am excited to find out. If we examine Helen’s body formation, it is different from the Basic Material already. But Helen’s body is also good in its own shape. Concerning the tail, both Helen and the Basic Material already have the rose-tail type. The offspring will inherit this trait, I believe. I just hope that they are free from the minor defects seen in the parents. The first of the three musketeers has excess layer in its upper lobes (left and right). The second one has slight unevenness in its lower lobe (not seen in the picture). The third one has the same weakness as Helen, which is one of the lower lobe folds inside when swimming. Perhaps I need to tackle this problem later if it persists.
Helen was born at the beginning of this year. She is not one year old yet. Interestingly, she has become the primary female in my breeding project this year.
Close to the end of this year, there are three projects left for Helen before she retires:
Deep red oranda project
Basic Material Preservation project
Purple Oranda project
In this essay, I will update the first project.
In my childhood, I had one occasion to keep a special red-white oranda. It was special because the red color was so intense. It was not orange nor deep orange. It was truly red. I have never seen such an oranda again ever since. If we examine Helen, she is an orange and white fish. In the world of goldfish, we call it red and white, since we believe the orange can be improved by giving her certain ingredients. But even with a good color enhancer diet, it is hard to improve Helen’s color in my city where the general climate is warm (tend to be hot). It is easier to achieve deep red coloration in the colder water. Anyway, I do not use color enhancer often. I use it mostly during the color mutation stages.
I felt lucky when one of my red-white butterfly goldfish offspring developed an intense red color. It was an anomaly in the batch. There was only one individual. I named him Beni. The red color is so striking even without color enhancer diet. I have used Beni to improve the color of my butterfly goldfish (it is under way). I have also mated Beni with my semi-tosakin goldfish with the long term purpose of creating tosakin with deep red coloration. And now, I am thinking of reviving my childhood special oranda!
So, I mated Beni with Helen at the end of last month.
Their feature differences are in the eyes, headgrowth, and tail shape. Adding color to the list, the project becomes a four-level difficulties. Well, the body shape is certainly different, but I think it will not contribute much to the difficulty. So, with this difficulty level, I do not think my special oranda will occur directly in the F1.
I predict I will get some intense red color offspring in F1, but not in the shape of a decent oranda. The protruding eyes are usually recessive to the normal eyes, so I expect normal eyes in the F1. I will also expect minimal or no headgrowth. From my experience, such a cross between a goldfish with headgrow and without headgrowth will result in no headgrowth in the initial stage. But as the fish gets older, it will develop small headgrowth. Let’s assume that I will get no headgrowth in the F1. The tail might not be as erect as I desire. The body shape might be so so. I will just pick the intense color ones to be the next parent fish.
At this stage I have two choices:
I can cross F1 x F1
I can cross F1 with another oranda
The first choice will strengthen the desired red color, but will let the improvement of oranda body conformation to chance. In fact, I might have some telescope eyes as the result of the recessive gene meeting. The headgrowth and tail might come variably, but might not even close to the desired standard. If this course is taken, the next step is to pick the F2 (already with deep red color) that resembles oranda as close as possible. From there, I can cross the F2 with another oranda.
The second choice will let me improve the body conformation to oranda standard. But, I do not know about the coloration. At this point, I need to admit that I do not know how the deep red color and the orange color will interact when they are mated. I know about yellow x orange, or blue x orange. They follow simple Mendellian rule. I also know about black x orange, which resulted in a spectrum between black and orange (namely: black, semi-black, grey, black-gold, and orange). But different crossing between black and orange can result in different color, though still within that spectrum. But I do not know what will I get if I cross deep red and orange. My guess is that it might behave similar to the black x orange. There might be a spectrum of color in the result (namely, orange, reddish orange, and intense red). But my F1 is not purely deep red since it is a cross between red and orange already. Will that mean my chance of getting intense red will be very slight in the F2 or even none? This course might give me a better oranda conformation but jeopardizing the intense red color.
Which course should I take?
Well, I still have half a year to come up with an answer. Plenty of time. But if you have any insight for me, please write a comment. I will be thankful.
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.
One feature that I want to include in my line of Oranda is the Goosehead type of headgrowth. In the book “Goldfish Appreciation” (By Steven Tong & Hermanto), we mention the principle of Main Identity. And the main identity of an Oranda is its headgrowth. Many breeders may not be aware of this principle such that when they try to improve their lines of Oranda (mostly by cross breed), they forsake the headgrowth. Well, one example of such a breeder is myself. Helen, as my main female Oranda this season, is a result of such attempt. In the effort to produce better body form and tail shape, the headgrowth becomes smaller in size.
Not a bad fish, right?
But the headgrowth is not the highlight of the fish. When we see Helen from sideview:
the first thing that catches our attention might be the stout body, or the beautiful tail, but not the headgrowth. In the principle of Main Identity, Steven and I insist that first impression we get from an Oranda should be the beauty of its headgrowth. Helen does not have this highlight.
Let us compare Helen with this Oranda:
This fish is also mine. At the first glance, people will almost always notice its headgrowth. So, the fish satisfies the requirement of the Main Identity Principle. Too bad, the body and tail are not as good as those of Helen. (This fish is not with me anymore by the time I write this blog)
I must mention that the book also talks about the principle of Overall Beauty. By this we mean that after the Main Identity get the right attention, the body and tail should also be good to make overall fish beautiful. Some breeder fall into the other spectrum of the trap by putting all the effort to make eye-catching headgrowth but by neglecting the body form and tail shape. This will not do.
So, my aim is to create a balance between the principle of Main Identity and Overall Beauty. I want to improve the headgrowth of Helen’s offspring. How? By crossing Helen with other Oranda that has good headgrowth. Luckily, I have two males for this purpose.
But before that, let me explain why I choose the goosehead type when obviously there are many other headgrowth type equally beautiful. First, it is purely personal preference. I just fall in love with the goosehead type. Second, I want to differentiate my line from the existing ones in the market.
Now, these are the two goosehead I have. First male:
Second male:
These two males are the halfway result to improve the goosehead tricolor Oranda body and tail forms. Forgive my bad memory, I think they are the cross between the tricolor Oranda with my purple Oranda. That is why their body and tail are not very weak, though not as beautiful as those of Helen. Unfortunately, I have no compatible female for them. I end up with only these two males. That is why my best choice is to cross them with Helen.
The offspring has been three days old. A small portion of them is light in color, which means they are either purple or brown Oranda. The rest are dark color, which can become wild color or red like Helen. If some becomes tricolor, it will be a big bonus for me. But I do not know about this.
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.
My helper takes a week leave to attend a business in his village. I am all alone to take care of all these goldfish. Yes, it will be a tiring week for me. Yet, I am very excited to have this occasion once in a while.
This morning, as usual, I woke up at 05.00. I took a time to read the Scripture accompanied by a cup of hot Milo (half dose to reduce my sugar consumption, of course). Then I did my routine exercises to prevent muscle injury when working on the ponds, especially when I must do the works alone. At 06.00 I went to my ponds which is just 5 minutes walking from my house.
The first thing I did was to check which goldfish was laying eggs. The one mating this morning was the Cow Ranchu. This was before the schedule. I was expecting her to lay eggs tomorrow. Since the eggs came out prematurely, there was only few of them. I think I know my mistake. The fish is a productive one. Feeding her solely with wheatgerm pellets is enough to keep her productive. Yet, yesterday I gave them frozen bloodworm and live daphnia. That was an unnecessary move for a productive fish. Those diets might be responsible to induce the breeding before its time. Anyway, I collected the eggs and determined to feed pellets only for now.
Next, I did the water change for all tubs without filtration. I siphoned some of them and change the water up to 90%. I did total water change for the rest and scrub them clean. I usually leave the latter to my helper. But today I did it myself. I did it cautiously to avoid back pain.
The tubs in the top shelf (from the right) contain the cross between telescope butterfly and celestial, daphnia culture, newly hatched brown oranda, and a weeks old blue ranchu. The bottom shelf contains the cross between tricolor oranda and purple ranchu (the first from the right). The three other tubs are daphnia culture.
Three of these tubs are the home for the topview ranchu, blue and purple ranchu, and the cross between tricolor oranda and purple ranchu that have come of age. Others are daphnia culture. I water change all of the tubs except the daphnia culture.
These nine tubs are the home of young blue oranda, blue pompom, young topview ranchu, and newly hatced cow ranchu (occupying 5 tubs of its own). Yes, I am concentrating on the cow ranchu at this time. All the tubs on the top shelf need water change, and all on the bottom need to be scrubbed.
I guess the hardest part was to scrub a big fiber tub 1.5 meter x 1.5 meter. I keep four large topview ranchu there and do a total water change every four days.
It is noticeable that I did not scrub them hard enough. I did not have enough energy to scrub it super clean. My helper usually did a better job. Well, he is a lot younger than me. Pardon my age.
While I scrub the tub, I put the fishes temporarily on these small containers.
Since today is Sunday, it is time to change the water of a special pond:
This 1 meter x 60 centimeter pond was meant as a filtration area. But I changed the function into a deep pond without any filtration. Somehow, the fishes I kept there can grow fast. The ranchu in the blue container is the resident, accompanied by her small friend. This ranchu is in the middle of a Keeping Contest which just starts and will ends on January next year. Keeping Contest is a routine occasion held by our Surabaya Goldfish Community (SGC).
Then I attended the eggs I collected from the day before. I checked the water. If there was any sign of foulness, I did the water change for the eggs:
After all these water change activities. I still had things to do. There were three bowls of cow ranchu (age: one week) to cull.
After culling, I fed my goldfishes their breakfast. The diets include frozen bloodworm, live daphnia, and many types of pellets from different brands.
Then I feed the daphnia culture:
I dedicate this large pond and many tubs to culture daphnia. I feed them with dried quail dung.
Last but not least, I must wash clean all the tools I use and clean the floor.
After putting the nets on top of some tubs that need shading, I went home. All these took two and a half hour. I was exhausted, thirsty, and hungry. Back at home, I need to water my garden first, and feeding the goldfish I kept in my house. Then I enjoyed a glass of cold apple cider vinegar with honey (my favorite drink) and porridge breakfast with my lovely wife. After taking my bath, I joined the Sunday Service of my Church via online. That was my morning.
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:
hermantogoldfish 