The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (7)

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.

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021

The Diary of A Goldfish Breeder 2021 (6)

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.

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021, tosakin

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (5)

Date: March 9, 2021

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.

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021, tosakin

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (4)

Date: March 8, 2021

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.

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.

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?

calico ranchu, cow ranchu, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (3)

Date: March 5, 2021

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.

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

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (2)

Date: 24 Feb 2021

Out of the four projects to establish my line of blue, brown, purple, and yellow oranda, three are already on the way since January. Each project presents its own difficulty.

Blue Oranda

My previous line of blue oranda was not bad, though they have not acquired the Basic Material’s body form. But the quality was declining at the end of last year. Somehow, my latest offspring regained the old version of blue oranda form with its long and slim body shape. Well, it is not bad. Just that it goes out of my plan. I decided to let most of them go. I was surprised to find myself with only single blue oranda left in my pond. I think I took a great risk in selling them. If something bad happen to this last Mohican, I will lose my line.

It is a great relief when this blue female oranda laid eggs this January. I quickly paired her with my male Basic Material. I collected the second batch of the eggs and not the first batch since I believe the first batch is usually weak. I will not expect the blue oranda directly from this cross. The blue oranda will appear in the F2. So far, the offspring has a good body shape and erect tail. But it is too early to judge them. In my calculation, this F1 (and also F2) will not have the complete Basic Material body form yet. Their shape will be transitional. I will need to mate the F2 with the Basic Material form again (probably the offspring of the current Basic Material) to have my objective realized in the F4. The plan is so straight forward. If everything is on course, then this project will be successful in two years (assuming that each step needs 6 months for the fish to mature and ready to mate).

At least, the first step has been done, and is on the right track. What can go wrong is if all the offspring die, or all of them turn out to be of the same sex. That is why I think the wise course is to keep the female blue oranda with me till the production of F2.

Brown Oranda

This project is behind the schedule.

I kept a pair of brown oranda from my previous line. In January, I mated my female brown oranda with the male Basic Material. Yet the result was weak. In my analysis, the bad result was due to the female brown oranda getting old. So, I got rid of the offspring and executed plan B. Actually, I had the option to cross the male brown oranda with the female Basic Material. Unfortunately, the female Basic Material was unproductive at that time. Glad that I had plan B.

My plan B depends on the offspring from the previous brown oranda. Somehow, I managed to breed the pair before they became weak, and I raised six youngsters. Six was more than enough, I thought. Right now, they are three months old, not ready to breed yet. So, I need to postpone this brown oranda project perhaps for three more months until the young brown oranda mature. Sounds like a good plan, isn’t it? Too bad, two of them died last week due to disease, and three more died this morning. I am left with one youngster, which is still in medication right now. I do not know whether it will survive or not. And I have not checked its gender yet. Hopefully, this last fish will survive and I can run the plan B three months from now. But I must admit, this plan B is not safe right now.

What happens if plan B fail, that is, if the last fish dies also? I have plan C.

Last year, I did not make a clear plan for my breeding project yet. So, I bred whatever project that came to my mind. One of them was making a brown oranda with large headgrowth without bothering about the body shape. So, I crossed the brown oranda with my tricolor goosehead. The offspring have red white and grey coloration, and is now five months old, almost ready to breed. When I decided to establish my line using the Basic Material body form, I thought about getting rid of this brown goosehead project, since I did not want to have too many overlapping projects. Glad I have not done that. So, if plan B fails, I still have this plan C. If I need to execute this back up plan, then this project will take six to nine months longer. It will take two and a half or even three years to complete.

Purple Oranda

Things get a bit messy here. Before this project to establish my purple oranda line, I already started several projects. First, I already bred my original line and now I have six young purple oranda about three months old (the same age as my young brown oranda). Second, I already mated my original purple oranda with my tricolor goosehead oranda to create purple oranda with large headgrowth. Right now, the F1 is already five months old and ready to spawn. Third, I already crossed my original purple oranda with the Basic Material body shape (I use the parent of my current basic Material in the cross) and the F1 is seven months old. So, with these stocks, I can have plan A to C in readiness. But it is hard work to maintain all of them.

From these collections, which one should I use as my plan A?

Of course, the most logical thing is to use the third project. I already have the F1. I will just need to breed the F2 and it will yield purple oranda with transitional body form. Then I will continue with crossing the F2 and the Basic Material again, and will achieve my goal in the F4. This will make the project be finish in one and a half year! Sounds great!. And that was what I did. I mated F1 x F1 in January and came up with the F2. But I anticipate two problems.

I only have one female in the F1, and she has a defect in her tail. The tail is folded. And I am worried that this trait might be carried forward to the offspring. So far, the offspring (F2) looks fine. But it does not mean that they will be free from defect, since folded tail might occur later. Hopefully the result will be mixed, so I can select the non-defect one to use. If all of them are defect, then I have some options. I might still mate them with the Basic Material line in the hope that the gene from the Basic Material will correct the defect. Or I can start over using the original line, mating them with the Basic Material (basically, this means I redo what I have been doing half a year earlier) with the consequence of taking a longer time for this project to accomplish. I do not know which one is a better strategy yet. I think for now I will just observe, and decide later according to the situation.

The second problem has happened. Some of the F2 are losing its purple color and are turning into white! This is bad. How can this happen? In my analysis, it is because I use red-white Basic Material fish in the previous cross. The purple color is basically a variant of black pigmentation. It will be stronger if I use black fish in the cross instead of red-white fish (let alone a dominantly white one). Actually, there were some grey fish in the F1, but I got rid of them, thinking that the colored one (red-white one) is better. Now I realize my mistake. The grey one might yield a more long-lasting purple color (this is still my guess). Yet, this is already happening. I have the option to continue with this F2, hopefully selecting the strong purple color if possible; or I can introduce black oranda to the project. But the introduction of black fish will complicate the project, since the black fish is not the Basic Material.

Well, so far, I need to observe how the F2 turns out. Will they have folded tail? Will they become all white? And I will think of solution later on after the observation.

Yellow Oranda

About seven months ago I crossed my original yellow oranda with the parent of the Basic Material. I kept two females from the offspring (F1). The first one is free from defect and is my first choice to breed. The second one develops a folded tail. As weird as it may seems, my first choice does not lay eggs up to now. The productive one is one with defect. I have no choice but to breed the defect one (F1 x F1). Unfortunately, more than 90 percent are single tail! I do not know why. But my guess this has something to do with the original yellow goldfish that I use (yellow comets – single tail). So, I discarded this batch. Now I am waiting for the first choice to lay eggs. Meanwhile, I run the back-up plan.

The key to my back up plan is my original female yellow goldfish (actually, she is yellow-white, very interesting color). She is very productive. I have several options:

I can breed her with another original yellow goldfish
I can mate her with the existing F1 (which already contain part of the Basic Material genetics)
I can cross her with the Basic Material

Which strategy is the best? Option 1 is to retain the original yellow goldfish in case something happens and I need to start from scratch. Option 2 has the same purpose but with a better body shape (since the result will have 25% of the Basic Material genetics). So, by this logic, option 1 can be discarded. Option 2 is even better than the option 3 in terms of the lesser time to complete the whole project. It seems that option 3 can be discarded also. But there is one possible problem to worry about. How if option 2 results in many single tail goldfish? If that happens, then option 2 cannot be used. But at this state, I do not know what will happen. So, I just do both option 2 and 3 simultaneously. And I have done them last week, with good egg hatches. So, now there are two sub-projects going on in this yellow oranda project, while waiting for the F1 x F1 to happen.

To complicate the matter, I also have another side project, which is the yellow sakura project. My aim here is to create transparent scale oranda with yellow and white color. I do not know how they will look like. I am not sure if this can be achieved as I expected. But it is nice to try. I have started this project about six months ago and already have the F1. The appearance of the F1 is just a red-white sakura with a few black stains. But the genetics is half yellow. I already breed this F1 x F1 and has one yellow white transparent color oranda (with a few black stains). It is very young, still less than two months old, but it already looks yellowish-white. I need more time to confirm the color. Apart from this F1 x F1, I also mate the original female yellow in the option 2 and 3 with this male F1! I am hoping to get some more yellow sakura with less black stains. But this project does not incorporate the Basic Material’s body shape. So, this will be a side- project. I do not know if I am too greedy or if I can be justified doing this. But this certainly complicate my yellow oranda project – an interesting complication.

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

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2021 (1)

Date: 19 Feb 2021

This year is the 21^st year of my breeding activity. In accordance to my New Year resolution to “celebrate my potential”, I see the need to be more focus in the area of my goldfish breeding. Though breeding is just a hobby for me – an obsessive one, I must admit – I need a clear direction. So, in the beginning of January, I assessed my breeding situation and made plans. The most feasible thing for me to do turns out to be establishing my line of Oranda.

I have been working with color experiment for many years already. I played with the blue, brown, purple, and yellow color in metallic goldfish. Right now, I have the blue oranda, brown oranda, purple oranda, and yellow oranda. I used many different sources to create them. For example, to create brown oranda, I crossed the brown pompom goldfish with red oranda; to create yellow oranda, I crossed yellow commet with red oranda. These different sources resulted in different oranda shapes. Though they are oranda, my brown and yellow oranda look very different. To make things complicated, I sometimes used several different lines of oranda in the crossing. So, for each type of color, I might have more than one shape variation. It is a bit overwhelming to maintain all of those variation.

Now it is time to simplify things. I want one uniform shape in all my colorful oranda variety. It does not mean that I will not keep other shapes. It just means that I should have my primary shape for oranda. It will be my line: my signature.

In order to do that, I need a basic material to work with. This, I think, is very important. I will induce this basic material into my colorful oranda so that I will have the blue, brown, purple, and yellow oranda with the shape as close as the basic material. Of course, the real basic material is only an idealism in my imagination. It does not exist. In reality, I need to find one close to my idealism. Or at least, a satisfying one. This non-existence of my ideal oranda creates a possibility to continually improve the basic material in the future.

For the past several years, I had my eye on a certain red-white oranda shape developed by a breeder friend. I especially admired its body form. I acquired that line, and mixed it with my fishes. The offspring becomes my basic material right now. In today’s diary, I would like to talk in length about this basic material. Let me first show the picture:

The Male

The Female

Basically, if I can create blue, brown, purple, and yellow oranda with such shape quality, I will be quite satisfied. And that is my current goal. Don’t you agree that those fishes will be gorgeous? These projects might take one to two years to complete.

Now let me go deeper.

What I admire in these two basic materials is, first of all, their body shape. The body length is medium; it has a good thickness (especially in the peduncle area); and it has a good body width (measured vertically from the back to the stomach). The female is slightly longer than the male. If I must choose the body length, I will choose the female. This preference of medium body length differs from the current trend of a shorter oranda. I know I do not really follow the trend.

The back curve is also good enough. It has a good height: higher than the headgrowth as required by a good standard, yet not as high as the oranda-ryukin hybrid. The current trend in the market is a very high oranda hump, which is fine with me, but I do not follow it. If I compare the male and female here, the male has a slightly better height.

My first concern about the body shape is that the peduncle of the female is positioned a bit upward / high. It makes the fish looks slightly imbalance – but only slightly. Fortunately, the male does not show this weakness. I think this weakness might occur in the offspring once in a while.

The bigger concern is the shape of the abdomen. The male has a good egg-shaped abdomen, though if it can be stretched a bit further back will be nicer. Yet, the female does not have the egg-shaped abdomen. I do not know yet if the stomach can be fuller later on in its development. It is yet to observe. But it is reasonable that some of the offspring might carry this weakness, since I saw the same case with the original line (from my breeder friend).

The scalation looks beautiful. The red color is not deep red, but is more intense than just orange color. There is a possibility that the red can be improved using color enhancer food. But the color is not my concern here, since I do not intend to breed the red or the red-white color as my main oranda. I will need to breed them still just to have enough basic material for the next breeding, but my main purpose is to have the blue, brown, purple and yellow oranda.

Concerning the headgrowth, I have come to a realization that my line will be more of the goosehead type of headgrowth. Looking back to the past several years when I have not decided at what type of headgrowth will my line be, I was already working many times with the goosehead type. And now, I am settled with it. The pictures above were taken two months ago. Now, the fishes have developed the headgrowth more. They have a larger growth on the hat area. Beautiful. The headgrowth was not excessive as in my tricolor oranda line, but it is not small, either. I might want to have a little bit more, if possible, so that the main identity of the fish (the headgrowth) will catch more attention when one sees it. In this basic material, the headgrowth is also seen below the eyes. I think it is the gene from the original line. For my line, I do not desire it and wish to minimize it later on. For now, I must expect that this trait (headgrowth below the eyes) might still occur in the offspring.

Last but not least, I must talk about the tail. The tail is of medium length (or between medium and long). It is a good length for me. I do not want the medium short or even a short tail. The degree of erection of the tail is good enough. It is not very spectacular, but it is considered good. The thickness of the tail tissue is good enough, though I will welcome a thicker one. There are three concerns about the tail. First, the lower tail lobe is not round. So, the lower tail cannot cover the anal fins well. The anal fins are too exposed. I also see this in the original line. And this weakness is uniform in the line. So, I need to plan a long-term repair for this, which is not easy if I cannot find this trait in the existing market. I have made several efforts, though. Yet, it is still a long process. For now, I must accept this weakness. Second, the lower lobes of the female (and some of its sibling) have small folds. The male does not have this. I guess this defect might occur once in a while in the offspring. Third, it was examined that the left and right lower lobes sometimes become imbalance when one of the lobes curls inward when swimming. The curl is not symmetric between the left and right lobes. Not all the sibling develops this, and I certainly do hope that this is not a hereditary defect. It is also possible that this type of tail needs special care so that it does not developed into imbalance curl inward. Perhaps this type of tail is not suited to deep water or strong current. I still need to observe this.

Anyway, after analyzing the basic material and see that they are obviously not perfect, I must say that I will be satisfied to have the basic material shape exist with blue, brown, purple, and yellow color. It is feasible for me to do. I also want to incorporate the tricolor into this basic material shape, but the difficulty is greater. I will save it for later.

kehidupan dalam air

Towards My Line

Ada sesuatu yang sedang berubah dalam diriku.

Sulit mendeskripsikannya.

Mungkin begini: dulu aku tau, sekarang aku TAU; dulu aku mengerti, sekarang aku MENGERTI. Ada hal-hal yang dari dulu aku sudah tau, tapi mengapa sekarang aku kembali pada pengetauan itu tapi secara berbeda? Ada suara dalam diri yang mengatakan: dulu kamu tau, tapi sebenarnya kamu belum tau; sekarang baru kamu tau.

Membingungkan?

Dalam memelihara ikan, dari dulu aku tau bahwa para master memiliki line mereka sendiri. Ikan-ikan mereka memiliki tanda tangan mereka: seragam dalam keunikannya. Itu menjadi idealisme para breeder. Aku sudah tahu itu belasan tahun, dan sering pula menyampaikan aspirasi itu kepada teman-teman sesama penghobi. Tapi sekarang aku sadar, sebenarnya aku tidak tahu apa-apa tentang itu.

Kalau ditanya, seperti apakah line ikan-ikanku? Maka aku akan menjawab tidak punya. Mungkin ada teman-teman yang mengatakan line ku seperti ini atau seperti itu. Tapi mereka keliru, karena ikan-ikanku terus berubah dari tahun ke tahun. Ada keinginan tertentu, maka aku mencoba mencetaknya. Ada ikan lain yang memiliki fitur menarik di pasar, maka aku mencoba menyuntikkan fitur itu ke ikan-ikanku. Dan ini tidak hanya sekali dua kali. Fitur-fitur unik yang berbeda-beda itu melimpah dalam dunia ikan koki. Aku terus bereksperimen dengan mereka sesuka hatiku. Akibatnya, aku konsisten berubah terus.

Tapi di tahun ke dua puluh satu kegiatan breedingku ini, aku sampai pada suatu kesadaran tertentu. Seperti pengelana yang akhirnya memilih untuk menetap “settle” di suatu tempat, demikian petualanganku dengan fitur-fitur ikan mulai mereda. Setidaknya, dalam jenis Oranda, aku mulai melihat bakal line-ku seperti apa. Gambaran itu makin lama makin jelas.

Aku sampai pada kesadaran bahwa “establishing a line” itu berarti tidak lagi mendua hati. Ibarat seseorang yang berjumpa dengan banyak wanita mengagumkan. Ada wanita yang fitur utamanya adalah kecantikannya. Dan harus kukatakan, kecantikan itu pun sangat bervariasi. Ada wanita yang daya tarik utamanya adalah intelektualitasnya. Meski tidak semua menghargai itu, bahkan banyak pria yang merasa takut pada fitur itu. Ada wanita yang begitu baik hatinya; ada pula wanita pekerja yang begitu berwibawa dan berprestasi; dan banyak lagi. Pemuda ini mengagumi semua keunikan-keunikan itu dan tidak dapat memutuskan mana yang akan dipujanya. Bahkan mungkin setelah menikahi seorang dari mereka pun, ia belum sepenuhnya yakin bahwa ia sudah memilih dengan tepat. Tapi, setelah bertahun-tahun menikah, di titik kesadaran tertentu, barulah ia mantap hati. Ketika hatinya sudah mantap, ia tidak lagi mendua hati. Benar, masih tetap banyak keutamaan di luar sana yang menarik. Tapi tidak mendua hati berarti memilih satu orang wanita untuk ditaruh di dalam hatinya, dan sudah tidak lagi peduli kepada yang lain. Demikian juga dengan membangun line ikan koki.

Aku tidak tahu, mengapa line yang muncul pertama secara jelas dalam diriku justru Oranda. Dulu waktu kecil aku pernah terkesima dengan seekor Oranda yang aku beli di pasar. Warnanya merah putih, namun merahnya sangat merah dan putihnya sangat bersih. Tapi tidak lama aku yang waktu itu masih kecil memeliharanya, ikan itu mati. Dan aku tidak pernah menjumpai oranda seindah itu lagi di masa mudaku. Ketika aku memulai hobi breeding, Oranda adalah ikan yang paling tidak favorit bagiku. Bentuknya yang berjambul mengingatkanku pada tante-tante dengan rambut disanggul tinggi sewaktu ke pesta. Terlihat berlebihan berdandan. Aku tidak suka. Namun sejak aku diajak seorang teman untuk menulis buku tentang apresiasi ikan koki, aku belajar banyak darinya tentang apresiasi Oranda. Jangan melihat Oranda sebagai tante yang sedang berangkat ke pesta. Jangan juga melihat Oranda sebagai badut yang lucu. Bukan, Oranda bukan itu. Oranda adalah seorang raja yang berwibawa. Jambul itu bukan rambut yang disanggul, atau topi seorang badut, melainkan mahkota seorang raja! Pandanganku tentang Oranda mulai berubah sejak itu. Jujur dahulu aku tidak mau memelihara Oranda. Aku akhirnya memelihara Oranda hanya untuk membuat sesi foto sebagai ilustrasi buku tersebut. Tapi makin lama memelihara makin aku bisa melihat keindahannya.

Ada Oranda line si A, ada pula line si B. Ada Oranda yang berjambul goosehead, ada yang tipe lionhead, dan segudang tipe lagi. Ada yang short body, medium, hingga long body. Ada bentuk tubuh yang langsing hingga yang lebar. Belum lagi berbicara tentang berbagai jenis ekornya. Sangat bervariasi. Dan runyamnya, aku bisa mengapresiasi keragaman itu, hingga tidak bisa memiliki line-ku sendiri. Tapi kini, setelah 20 tahun breeding, mulai jelas bagiku idealisme Oranda mana yang kupilih untuk menjadi line-ku. Dan itu berarti aku harus merelakan keindahan-keindahan yang lain.

Tentu saja aku tidak ingin sama dengan line teman-temanku yang sudah establish. Untuk masalah bentuk aku akan mengadopsi line tertentu, dengan sedikit modifikasi bentuk, tapi dengan modifikasi besar pada warna. Line Oranda ku adalah blue oranda, brown oranda, purple oranda dan yellow oranda dengan bentuk seperti foto di atas.

Tidak lagi mendua hati terdengar seperti sebuah prinsip yang sederhana. Tapi tidak mudah mencapainya. Ini masih sekedar masalah ikan, belum lagi masalah menerapkannya dalam kehidupan.

“Establishing a Line” juga berarti menerima kelebihan dan kekurangan ikan itu. Tidak ada ikan yang sempurna. Mungkin sempurna di fitur tertentu, tapi di fitur yang lain ia tidak seindah ikan orang lain. Mungkin juga fitur dalam line yang sedang dikembangkan ini bukan fitur yang sedang naik daun. Tapi, hati yang tidak mendua juga adalah hati yang bisa menerima. Ia sempurna di mata breedernya, sempurna dalam kelebihan dan kekurangannya. Apa kata orang tidak lagi menggoyahkannya, apalagi menyinggung hatinya. Ia puas.

Tidak berarti breeder itu tidak akan melakukan perbaikan apa-apa lagi. Perbaikan tetap dilakukan. Variasi juga tetap dikembangkan. Namun pergumulan akan garis besar utamanya sudah selesai. Sama seperti seorang suami yang sudah menerima istrinya apa adanya juga masih kadang bertengkar atau mengkritik, tapi itu bukan lagi hal besar.

Itulah yang kini kulihat tentang membangun sebuah line yang dahulu tidak kulihat.

Dalam kategori Oranda, aku makin jelas, dan aku masih butuh mungkin dua tahun untuk sampai pada angan-angan tersebut. Dalam ranchu, aku masih belum menemukannya. Dalam tahun-tahun mendatang mungkin ranchu ku masih akan sangat bervariasi dan tidak dapat disebut sebagai sebuah line yang solid. Aku masih perlu “njajan” hingga menemukan tambatan hati.

Ya, tidak apa-apa. Satu per satu saja. Dijalani dan dinikmati saja.

Hermanto 26 Januari 2020

cow ranchu, Purple goldfish

Cow Projects 2020

This is the second time I breed my cow ranchu. There are two ongoing projects. First, I cross my remaining cow ranchu (male) with his own offspring (or niece – since I used several male to produce her). Second, I cross the same cow ranchu with a female purple ranchu out of curiosity.

The first project (cow x cow) resulted in weak body shape offspring. But it is not my main interest. My interest is in the coloration of the offspring. At the age of roughly three months old, they are still mostly transparent white. Few have red patches. Some have black little dots and / or black patches “inside” (beneath the scale). Black marking on top of the scale (outside) is rare in these offspring. If they do, the black marking is in the shape of patches, not dots.

The fully white ones are nicknamed Casper by my friends. I was informed that these Caspers and the ones with black dots inside will develop the black color outside later on. It is certainly my hope to see it comes true. But so far, I do not see it coming. None of them can be claim as cow ranchu yet.

Let me refresh our memory with the pictures of the parent:

I do this first project twice. So I have collected two batches. Since the first batches were on medication when I took these photographs, I only managed to take pictures of the second batches. And these are the results. Each fish is displayed from left and right side.

The second project (cow x purple ranchu) has a different result. The offspring looks more like calico with a satisfying color composition. To compare this with the above project, this second project does not produce Caspers. They have black patches inside (not dots), but also white dots outside (not patches at this stage). I am eager to see how these dots will develop later on. And to compare with my previous project of crossing the cow with blue ranchu, I do not get any kirin-like color in this crossing (cow x purple) as I get one in the previous crossing (cow x blue). This comes as a surprise to me, since the blue and purple color are closely related. I expected to see a kirin-like coloration in this project, but it does not happen. I am still curious though about what will happen if I cross these offspring back to a purple ranchu.

These are the parent fishes:

And the offspring are:

I already cull out the fishes from these two projects. Those with weak body shape are eliminated (I give them freely to friends). So, the next update will not contain all of the fishes portrayed here.

Enjoy.

cow ranchu

The Transformation of my Cow Ranchu (2019 – 2020)

As I mentioned before, I bought five cow ranchu from an importer in Indonesia (Jakarta Goldfish Centre). They came from De Quan Farm in Fu Zhou, China. Only one male survives until now and he has been my favorite so far. One amazing feature of the fish is the growth of its black pigment. When I compared the fish before and after, I can hardly recognize him. So, it is confirmed that the black pigment in cow ranchu can grow.

This is the picture taken on December 2019:

And this is him in October 2020:

Marvelous, isn’t he?

However, the growth of the black pigmentation on the offspring is quite challenging. Until now (almost 4 months old), the black pigment does not seem to grow at all. Most of the offspring are white with some black spots underneath the transparent scale, which look like bluish or shadowy color. I am hoping that the black pigment can come out to the outer layer of the transparent scale. Some people reported that it usually happens late on the fish. Hopefully they are correct. The rest of the offspring resemble calico. I will post their pictures on the next posting.

Feel free to share what you think about the transformation of this cow ranchu on the comments below 😊 Thank you.

hermantogoldfish

My projects on Goldfish

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