Tag Archives: oranda

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2023, yellow oranda, yellow sakura oranda

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2023 (7)

Update Project #4: Yellow Oranda

There was a setback on this project as the results were weak. Fortunately hope arises unintentionally.

Following the project I mentioned in the Diary 2021 #25, I end up Yellow Oranda with goosehead type of headgrowth, short body, and weak fins. The best among them is this male:

As you can see, the first ray of the dorsal is short and curved, so as the tail. I think this curvature looks a bit abnormal to me. The fish swim normally in my deep pond, but seems to have maneuver difficulty in a small space (as I observed when placing him in a tank for the purpose of taking these pictures.) But yes, I must admit that the head is beautiful, and the body looks positively thick. I have a hard time deciding whether I should use him as a parent or not. And I think, I will pass.

The rest of the batch is worse. I keep only one as she is the only female in the batch. And she is also the only female Yellow Oranda I have! Let’s take a look at her:

The goosehead type is visible in her, but not as pronounced as the male. Perhaps the lack of white color in the body and head makes her less attractive than the male. The fins differ sharply from the male as they belong to the long-fin category. The dorsal fin and the tail are not well-erected. And there are traces of untidiness on the borders of the fins (first ray and last rays of the dorsal and tail.)

I don’t think I want to use them as parent as I suspect they show weak genetics. Mating them might not be a good move.

Fortunately, there is a hope out of my expectation.

To improve my Yellow Sakura Oranda line (Project #5), I crossed my Yellow Sakura Oranda (Diary 2021 #26) with the parent of my metallic Yellow line (Diary 2021 #25). The cross yielded two variants: Yellow Sakura and Yellow Metallic. Of course my main expectation was in the better quality of Yellow Sakura Oranda. I did not expect anything about the second variant. Unfortunately, the expected Yellow Sakura Oranda was also experiencing a drawback. The fins were untidy, the color was dominantly white, and the heads were almost bald! I think this is a big blow for me. For several months to come, I will have nothing to update on the Yellow Sakura line. Yet, surprisingly, the Yellow metallic fish that came from the same batch has tidy fins and good body shape quality! Mostly bald, though. I kept only one from source, the best one, with sufficiently good headgrowth. He is a male fish that I can be proud of:

Handsome, right?

The only weakness I see is in the lower lobe of the right tail. The curve is not perfect. But overall, this fish is a joy to me as it provides hope for my next generation of Yellow (metallic) Oranda.

What strategy do I employ?

Yes, as you can guess, I have no choice but to mate him with the weak female above. And the eggs are hatching today!

But that’s not all.

During all this time, I also managed to cross my Yellow metallic line to my Basic Material (Helen offspring). The results are redwhite oranda carrying yellow gene recessively. The fish are large, long, semi goosehead type, and moderately good finage. They have not laid eggs right now. If they do, I think I will also mate them with the handsome yellow male!

Exciting, right?

Please wait for the result!

For video of the handsome male, please check the youtube below:

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Brown Oranda, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2023

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2023 (5)

Project #2: Brown Oranda

Last time I mentioned my Brown Oranda splitted into two lineage: the Dark Choco and the Tea-colored Oranda. I decided to focus on the Dark Choco one, since it is more unique.

This lineage of Brown Oranda diverged from my Blue Oranda line far enough to manifest different body features. My Blue Oranda line has a rounder body and well-erected tail. But it has weakness in its dorsal fin shape. The dorsal looks a bit thin. Some is good in its straight position while others is slightly curved or even a bit fallen to side. This Brown Oranda line is directly opposite to it. The body is a bit longer than the Blue one, and the dorsal looks thick and strong with a sharply straight position. The weakness is in the tail, which is not so well-erected.

I am happy with these differences since they provide me with materials to improve both lineages through cross breeding.

These are three of my Dark Choco:

As you can see, the dorsal fins are pretty uniform. This become their strength.

The dark brown color is also consistent, which is another point to value. There is a special observation I made regarding this color. This dark brown color usually comes with white color in part of its tail, while the tea (or light) brown color has totally uniform color in all its parts. Could this be that the dark brown is actually the exact same pigmen but more condensed than the light one? I do not know about that. But there is another significant different among these two types: in the light brown one, when the brown color fades, the occuring color is always (as far as I observe) orange color. So, it is possible to have brown and orange pattern in a fish coming from the fading light brown color. But the dark brown one has the capacity to introduce white color in its pattern, which the light brown one does not have. So, it is possible to have brown and white pattern (or even brown, red and white) pattern coming from the dark brown lineage. Isn’t it amazing?

In fact, the third fish was brown and white fish before. But then the brown color takes over to make the body totally dark brown and leave the white to the tail. So, this is another unique feature: the ability to remelanize (to reintroduce the dark brown color that had faded)

Back to analyzing the fishes, their body lengths are different. The second fish has the longest body, while the third one has the shortest (roundest) type. The first one is the medium length type. So there is no uniformity in the body length.

The tail is varied, also, with the second fish becomes the weakest.

Well, after analyzing the strength and weakness of this dark brown lineage, I think I am happy with the current result. I am also excited to see the possibility to improve them in the future. My best pair is the first fish (male) and the third one (female). I am also thrilled to see whether I can create the brown, red, and white stable pattern. If so, it will be an interesting alternative to the current tricolor (black, red, and white pattern) in the market. It will be a pattern I have never seen during my whole life time!

For the video please see the youtube below:

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Blue Oranda, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2023

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2023 (4)

Project #1: (Semi) Blue Oranda

Well, the result of my Blue Oranda is satisfactory. But as a breeder, I need to anticipate the genetics being saturated due to inbreeding. So, I develop a cousin-line by crossing the female Blue Oranda parents (Diary 2022 #19) with an orange oranda of my own, which unfortunately I did not manage to take his picture. So, the phenotype of the offspring is orange / red white Oranda, while the genotype carries the blue genetics recessively. I keep only best three of them currently:

Let me analyze them.

Body-wise, the first fish is superb. It has depth and thickness. The length doesn’t seem to be short, more of a medium type, which is what I want. The curve has a good height. It will contribute to the bulky appearance of the fish even when the headgrowth grows higher. The headgrowth is a bit small right now, but I will not worry since I know the parents headgrowth type. It won’t be small, but it won’t be excessive, either. Just right. The tail has a good erect angle with no defects. Perfect! The only visible weakness is the dorsal fin with its curved first ray. This feature also appears in parts of my current Blue Oranda line. Well, it is not really a defect. It is just less desirable than the perfectly straight one. This fish seems to be a female.

What to make of her?

Of course I want to have Oranda with this shape, but with a better dorsal fin. If I use this to cross with my Blue line, then I must choose a male with a good dorsal fin. This will make my Blue Oranda lineage improved in terms of the dorsal fin, but I don’t think I will get 100% better dorsal fins directly from the crossing. It would be better if both parents have good dorsal fins!

Or I can use the first fish as my Basic Material fish. If I mate it with the second fish, which seems to be male, then I can develop a good quality line of orange / orange white Oranda. I can use the line to improve my other Oranda projects (see Diary 2022 #18 for list of my projects).

The body of the second fish is not as strong as the first one, but it might due to the gender difference. This fish has a strong erect dorsal fin. I am glad to have him since I have the needed material to further my projects.

The third fish is probaly a male also. But the body is not as strong as the second fish. And the dorsal is not desirable. So, I think I have no need of him.

For video, please see the youtube below:

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purple oranda, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2023

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2023 (3)

Project #3: Purple Oranda / Lavender

Currently I have two lines of Purple Oranda. One comes from the Blue line, and another from the brown line. I will update only the first line at this moment.

As you might have known, I have crossed purple and blue many times such that my blue oranda lineage carries the purple genetics recessively. The blue oranda parents I mentioned in the diary 2022 #19, which I thought were purely blue, turned out to produce a little percentage of purple! So, without any effort, my Project #1 to create blue oranda rewards me with a succesful outcome for Project #3. The quality of the purple oranda is roughly similar to their blue brothers and sisters.

These are five of them:

These are young fish. I am satisfied with their quality right now. I am sure they will turn into beautiful specimens several months to come. Two things I need to improve: the dorsal fin and the pattern. Some fish shows weakness in its dorsal fin, namely the first ray. Concerning the pattern, I am hoping to have more brown color staining the purple to make the ochiba patterns. I consider the ochiba pattern to be more desirable than plain purple.

I will update these fish again when they are mature in shape.

For those interested to see their video, please visit the youtube link below. Thank you.

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Blue Oranda, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2023

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2023 (2)

Update Project #1: Blue Oranda

At the end of last year I wrote the progress of my Blue Oranda Project (Diary 2022 #19). These are their offspring:

One:

Two:

Three:

Four:

Five:

These are from the 1st batch. I kept six of them. Yet when I caught them for the purpose of taking these pictures, I only managed to catch five of them. I produced more in the 2nd batch for the purpose of Keeping Contest in our community with 23 participants.

Analyzing these offspring, I think this confirm the uniformity of the line. The body shape is relatively the same type. Yes, I must admit some have wider body and some a bit slimmer. But I think this might due to the sex. The slimmer ones I suspect are the male. The headgrowth is similar. The tail shape and the erect-angle is uniform enough. The obvious weakness I think in the dorsal fin, especially in the 4th specimen. Well, mostly have good dorsal fin, but some are weak. About the stability of the color, mostly are strongly blue. Yet, about 20% still turn into white.

Theses fishes are approximately three to four months old, so they still have lots of time to grow. Their current size is about 12cm.

I am satisfied with the current result. Perhaps I will breed true to this lineage for several years to come. Perhaps with improvisation on the dorsal and headgrowth a little bit.

Enjoy.

For the video link, see the youtube below:

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Blue Oranda, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2022

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2022 (19)

Project #1: Blue Oranda

I am enthusiastic about the result so far. Well, it is not perfect yet. But I see some significant results.

I keep three fish from the latest lineage. One male and two females. Yes, I know. It is a bit risky to keep such a small number of parent fish. But I can always cross any of them with another Oranda even if I were left with one.

Let me show my three musketeers:

The 1st female:

The 2nd female:

The male:

Let me do some analyzes on these three:

First, there is uniformity in terms of the body shape, the head shape, and the color stability. This uniformity is a significant progress, in my opinion. The two females look rounder than the male body shape, but I think this is due to the male – female sexuality. It is common in goldfish to have rounder body shape in female, though it should not be a general rule (I have seen male with round shape such that it cannot be differentiated from the female just looking at the body shape). The headgrowth is uniform across these three, which is a bit too thin for me. The color is strongly blue (or some might say platinum) and show no sign of going to turn to white.

Second, there is a bit of departure from my initial vision concerning to the body shape. I am satisfied with the broadness of the body width (measured from top to bottom). But I envisioned a longer body shape (measured from side to side). Well, as I ponder on this body quality, I say to myself that frankly, I do not mind with this body shape. So, I can say that this body shape is final. Whether there will be a longer version later on is a bonus which I will not work on it on purpose.

Third, the headgrowth is minimal and it is far from my original plan to have a goosehead type of headgrowth. Yes, I think I still need to work on this, but there is no haste. The market is full of this kind of headgrowth. And combined with the round body shape, this quality can still be appreciated as above average quality. I can call this headgrowth feature as finish at this stage. But I will slowly try to improve it.

Fourth, the fins are not uniform and below the competition quality. The dorsal fin of the 1st female is good, but its tail is not desirable, while the 2nd female has these features the other way around. This provides difficulty for me to decide which one is best to be the mother. Well, I will decide later when it is time for them to lay eggs.

Fifth and foremost, there is a significant quality progress from my initial blue oranda! And I am satisfied with this progress. My initial oranda was skinny (as shown on the left below) and now they are bulky!

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Brown Oranda, oranda, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2022, yellow oranda

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2022 (12)

This is a comparison between three shapes of Oranda.

Three of my Oranda have grown mature into Jumbo size. I think they have reached their peaks, or almost. So, it is the right time to compare them with the purpose of learning and adjusting my idealism of Oranda.

The first one is Helen the 2nd, as my main blueprint. She carries the recessive gene of purple color, so she is what I call a semi purple oranda. Let’s see her development over time:

Previous (6 months ago):

Now:

I am not really happy with the development. The headgrowth is growing, so there is no problem with it. But the body which was stout before seems to lose its thickness. I do not know why. Can it be because of the headgrowth? As the head grows, the previously high curve of the back bone looks a bit flat now. Or can it be due to the excessive breeding? Perhaps lots of nutrients in the body are directed to producing eggs to let the body lose its muscles, just like a human mother facing calcium deficiency after giving birth. I do not know. The size of the fish is amazing, but she looks like a young fish with mediocre quality. The color does not seem to change much. The orange color cannot become red. And yes, few flecks of black pigment appear on her body. It is not a sign of stress. It is common for a semi purple fish to develop such color over time. The first ray of the dorsal fin becomes untidy. The tail is in good shape.

These are the video of Helen from the side and top, showing her size:

The second oranda to compare is my Dark Choco Oranda. Amazingly, with such a round body she can grow into jumbo size also! Let’s see how she develops:

Previous (6 months ago):

Now:

She was not in my blue print at all. I never think about such a ryukin-like body shape. I do not even have a ryukin currently. So, this shape comes to me out of the blue. And the dark chocolate color is another blessing. I do not even know that such color exists. I only knew the tea-colored brown goldfish so far. So, to have this fish is like to hit a double jackpot for me. Since this fish has caught my attention, I think it is suitable for me to give her a name. But I cannot make up my mind whether to name her Kong or Godzila. I think Godzila sounds better, though she is a female.

The headgrowth grows but not so much. It grows in the same pace with the body growth, so she can maintain her bulky ryukin-like shape with the small headgrowth. But the color seems to grown more solid, and it spreads to the fins! The dorsal fin is getting slightly bent.

Seeing this color, I remember that we have various spectrum of black color in goldfish. But usually, we divide them into just two: solid black, and not so solid one. The tea-colored brown resembles the not so solid type of black pigment, while the dark choco resembles the solid black color. There seems to be another layer or coat of brown color on top of the scale, which might be the cause of darker appearance. Let’s review the differences in a picture:

I felt the urge to preserve this dark brown color. So far, I see it nowhere else. It will be a pity if we lose such a beautiful color. I have a male sibling of her with the same dark color, thank God! But the sibling has a very different shape of body and fin! If I mate them, there is a possibility to be able to preserve the dark brown color, but I might not be able to maintain the bulky shape of Godzila. Well, life seldom gives all we want.

But there was a bigger problem than that. Godzila is now about 1.5 years of age and no sign of breeding till last month. Fish usually lays eggs at the age of four months in my place. Godzila definitely falls under the category of unproductive / sterile. I already gave up on her. Fortunately, suddenly she laid eggs for the first time at the beginning of this month. I was not prepared at that time. But I was able to keep the eggs the second time she mated. I could not wait to see the result!

These are her video, from side, from top (to show the size) and the comparison between the dark and the light brown:

The third fish is a male yellow goldfish. He is a jumbo fish right now and the last of yellow oranda I keep at this moment. Of course, I have his offspring but in a crossing appearance. I mean, I cross her with a goosehead and comes up with a red and white fish as the F1. They are semi yellow oranda. This yellow has a stout longer body with a beautiful headgrowth. Let’s see the development of this handsome guy:

Previous (6 months ago):

Now:

The headgrowth has developed very well. The goosehead type of head is visible, along with the slight development on its cheeks. The fish does not lose its stoutness nor its body length, which I think is good. The only weaknesses are the fold in its lower right tail and the dorsal fin losing a bit of its ability to stay erect.

Here are his videos:

And now it is the time to compare these three:

Well, do tell me how will you rank them and why 😊

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dancing queen, oranda, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2022

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2022 (10)

This update covers the evolution of my Dancing Queen (DQ) Project.

To refresh a little bit, my original DQ project was meant to create sideview tosakin. This was the best result from the year 2020 after several years of effort:

But I guess it was a lonely journey. I decided to terminate the project for good. I was struggling at that time. It was hard for me to let go my lovely babies. Just before I let go all my DQ, I made an unthoughtful move by mating my last DQ with a grey Rosetail Oranda. Perhaps in my subconscious awareness I was hoping that Oranda with DQ tail might receive better acceptance. As a result, I ended up with few beautiful grey Oranda like this:

But I quickly realized they could not display their beautiful tail in deep water pond. So, once again, I was thinking of terminating them. But, as before, I managed to unthoughtfully breed them before I sold them. And I think I hit a jackpot. Some of the offspring have flatter tail, making them more suitable for shallow water and top-viewing. So I kept three of them in my large shallow pond along with my tosakin. As the fishes grew mature, I was amazed with the development. One of them grew into a very beautiful fish. Every time I showed him to my friends, they cannot help marvel at its tail. It is visibly different from tosakin tail. And I cannot stop taking his pictures:

And this is the tail position when he swims forward:

The tail is way longer and larger than my Tosakin, and softer. There is a flavor of the rosetail effect which is absent in Tosakin. Yes, it is very similar to the Orchid Tail developed by friends in Thailand. Since it has no legal name yet, my friends and I call it Oranda Dancing Queen (Oranda DQ). And I think I would like to develop it further to be one of my signature.

Too bad, the female are not as good as this male. This is one productive female which I breed with him:

I hope there will be some decent offspring resembling the father.

But I think I need to improve its color and enhance the tail feature. So, I decided to cross the handsome male with Tosakin. I know, this might impact negatively to the headgrowth. But I think I can work it out later on. The tail might look closer to tosakin, but I think I can select some closer to the father. And these are some of the current results:

With this piece as the best, I think:

I can still see the softness characteristic of the tail.

So, my DQ has evolved into Oranda DQ.

Well, let’s wait how these babies will develop in the future. Will they grow their headgrowth? Will the tail become as handsome as their father’s? Let’s hope so!

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miscellaneous

Goldfish Now Unseen

Browsing through old books on Goldfish, I saw specimens I cannot find nowadays. In this writing, I want to mention three that capture my attention.

First, a celestial eye with headgrowth. This is rare. I have met two kinds of celestial goldfish: the popular celestial eye without dorsal (usually with slim body and long tail) and the celestial eye with pompoms (usually comes with short tail and thick body). From my experiment, I have created celestial eye with dorsal fin (Nicknamed Celestial Dragon according to Mr Lei in his youtube channel Goldfish Corner).

But there is another type of celestial I have never seen alive nor mentioned by anyone else. I find the fish in my old encyclopedia. In fact, it is the first book I read in my childhood that mentions goldfish.

The Indonesia edition has 1979 copyright. Very old! And it has only 1 page about goldfish, which I observed to my heart lots of time.

Beautiful goldfish for a child like me! I adopted the terms Hanabus, Seibungyo, Chakin, and more without knowing what they meant. At the heart of this picture is a weird kind of celestial:

This celestial has a headgrowth!

Well, nothing else I can say about it. No other information. It remains an out-of-this-world goldfish for me. Yes, there is a temptation to recreate it. But as I think again, I do not know if I want to do that. The fact that this specimen existed once but no more might be a hint that something might be wrong with it. Perhaps there was not enough market. Perhaps the fish lost a certain function which make it unable to survive. I do not know. I think a headgrowth like that (seems to be like a goosehead type) might intervere with the eyes, in terms of both the functionality and the appreciation – a conflict between two features). Yet, it remains a mysterious fish for me.

Second, a rare ranchu color from Joseph Smartt and James H. Bundell’s “Goldfish Breeding and Genetics” (1996):

On top of page 67 I see a beautiful but rare color:

There is no description about the color. I try to observe this picture many times to figure out if this belongs to metallic or transparent scalation category, but I just cannot be sure about it. And I have no idea of how to create such color! It occurs to me if this was a real fish or just a redwhite fish painted with black marker. But knowing the reputation of the author, I believe it was a real fish. This specimen reminds a mystery to me. Do tell me if you can throw some light on how to create this coloration.

Third, a rare oranda color from “Goldfish in Hongkong” by An Urban Council Publication (1993):

On page 43 there are pictures like these:

And this is the description:

Strange color, right?

For sure I have never seen such a color on the internet nowadays. I also do not know how to create such a fish. The description gives a hint that it has something to do with blue fish (blue metallic scale, I think). But how come the blue color only appear in the face of the fish in a uniform way?

Those three specimens are in the top category of the most mysterious goldfish for me. It will be a delight if one day someone will revive them.

Enjoy.

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Brown Oranda, The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2022

The Diary of a Goldfish Breeder 2022 (8)

Color exists in spectrum.

When we say red goldfish, we must understand that there are different kinds of red with slight differences among them. The same case happens in other types of goldfish color.

In this opportunity, I would like to present two types of brown color I observe in my goldfish collection. In the previous diary (#7) I posted my current development of brown oranda. The color reminds us of the color of tea:

Actually, when I do a project – say, the brown oranda project – I do not just do one mating / crossing. I do several different pairings in the same period of time. One of the pairs produces the tea-colored oranda above. But another pair, which I must admit I did not document it well, results in a darker colored brown oranda. The color looks like the color of dark chocolate, I think. And it has a beauty of its own! Here she is:

This is the video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqSy4SucwvQ

This dark choco oranda seems to be from slightly different lineage from the tea colored one. Yes both of them have cute little hump and similar headgrowth type. Both have good body depth (width). But the dark choco has a bit longer and thicker body, and smaller tail type. And I think there is an important feature to note: while the tea-colored has the color in all its body, including the tail, the dark choco can develop white color (or no pigment) in its tail! I used to think that the white color cannot coexist with the brown. Usually, when the brown color fades, the fish will reveal orange color. But this dark choco forces me to revise my understanding. The white color can coexist with the brown color! Aesthetically, it is beautiful. If the white color can exist in its tail, perhaps one day I will see the white color occurs in the body to create the brown (dark brown) and white goldfish. It will be amazing!

I do not know what creates this different spectrums of brown. I also do not know why the white color can occur in this dark choco girl. But when I see the development of this dark brown color, I immediately fall in love. Right now, if I must choose one brown color to be my line, I do not know which one will I choose. As a hobbyist city breeder, I do not think I can afford both.

Which one do you prefer?

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