cow ranchu

Cow Ranchu Crossing

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

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

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

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

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

Next, I mated the cows with these calicos:

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

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

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

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

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

cowblue 7

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

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

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

Panda Oranda

Re-melanization process

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

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

remelanization process 2 mar 2020 remelanization process mar 2020

Panda Oranda

Panda That Humbled me down

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

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

The offspring were not blue in color!

They were grey just like the common metallic goldfish!

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

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

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

Yellow goldfish

Yellow Oranda 2019

It has been a long time I do not update on my projects. Now is the time to catch up. First, lately, I have successfully developed yellow wakin from the yellow comets I bought from Japan. However, I found out that the yellow color is most striking when seen from the side-view. So, I crossed my yellow wakin with Oranda. The yellow and red white color cross is pretty straight forward, the yellow color is recessive and the red / red white is dominant. The F1 had no yellow color. The yellow occurred as the result of F1 x F1. And after sorting hard, I kept a few as my next parent fish. This is the main female:

DSC_9571 (2)

Some of them have white marks. It is an interesting combination. This is the 2nd female which has few white color on its head and fins:

DSC_9592 (2)

Analyzing these fishes, I think it is too early to call them as Oranda. The headgrowth is there, but too small. And the tail will be more beautiful if it is more erect, as the current Asian preference dictates. So, I am not satisfied yet. I have done further projects to improve this features. I made two crosses. First is to cross these yellows with large-head Oranda (as a record, I use a Thai tricolor Oranda with goosehead type of headgrowth, with the not-so-spectacular tail shape). Second is to cross these yellows with superb body and superb tail type oranda, yet with not-so-spectacular headgrowth). As I am writing this blog, they are 3cm already. Of course, they will not be yellow. Their offspring will. So, it will take about another year to see the result. Well, let’s see ….

Brown Oranda

It all started with some chocolate pompom I bought from China. The brown color captivated my attention. Most of them had orange fluffy nostrils to make them adorable. To my knowledge so far, chocolate color like this was rarely found in other goldfish variety. Well, I saw a brown butterfly sometimes on the internet, but I have never seen one alive. I remembered seeing a brown oranda nicknamed chakin in an encyclopedia I had during my childhood. But I cannot find one live specimen of chakin (teh-kin, or tea-kin, the tea colored goldfish) here in Indonesia. Even the chocolate pompom had to be imported from China. I was entertaining a project to recreate brown oranda from this chocolate pompom I had.

This is one chocolate pompom I bred from the imported parents. I had many of this several years ago.

I crossed it with an oranda. I am sorry I forget about an important fact regarding this matter. I could not recall whether I used a common oranda or a redcap oranda for this cross. The result was all orange goldfish, with small head growth, and the small pompom in some. Those were my transition fish. I did not bother to take a picture of them.

Then I inbred those transition fish to get the desired result. I chose the few brown colored offspring and mated them with oranda again to improve the oranda characteristic. Once again, I got all orange color, but this time, they were decent oranda, with no or insignificant pompom. My final result should come from inbreeding them.

And yes, I got what I wanted! The brown oranda! From the start, I picked up the fry which showed light brown color right after they hatched. I grew them up. Yet, to my disappointment, only one remained brown until maturity. The rest turned into orange.

I mated this only brown with its orange sibling. The hatchlings were all brown in the beginning. And only two remained brown until now. I still keep them and now they are roughly 20 cm long with no hint of turning into brown. Unfortunately, both of them are male. All the female has turned orange. Below is one of current brown oranda I had, which I consider as my throphy.

One strange phenomenon is this. Actually, there was a third male brown oranda, which slowly turned into orange. It retained less than 10 percent of its brown color. I was about to cull it out. Yet, I did not know how, it started to regain its brown color. This is one of the phenomenon I call the reverse demelanization. I managed to take the picture when it regained its brown color after being almost all orange:

At first, I thought the increasing brown color might due to stress. If that is the case, the brown color will be temporary. But, it continued to grow to cover the whole body of the fish, leaving out only its cap. It grew into a beautiful fish: a brown red cap, if I may say! And then the reversing process stopped. Until today the fish is still alive, and has been almost a year in this state of pattern!

Beautiful, isn’t it?

Any explanation?

That is my project to recreate the brown oranda. I think the project is finished. The only thing left is to multiply them, and to get the market to appreciate them.

Have a good day!

Brown Panda Ranchu, Chocolate Ranchu, Panda Ranchu, Purple goldfish

Brown Panda Ranchu

As a side result of the Purple Ranchu Project, I also get the Brown Panda Ranchu. Actually, it is the Purple Ranchu who demelanizes to produce a purple and white fish. The purple gets darker to produce the appearance of brown / light brown. This process is exactly the same as the demelanization process in the blue ranchu to become panda ranchu (Black and White Ranchu).

As this variety is still rare, I think it is better to document it here for future reference. Here are some pictures:

bp1wp bp2wp bp3wp bp4wp bp5wp bp6wp

Purple goldfish

Final Chapter on Purple Ranchu Project

I think I have come to the final stage of my project on purple goldfish. Starting with the report by Shisan C. Chen as my inspiration, I am finally able to create the purple ranchu. I called the color purple, since I heard that term being used when I was young and naive in goldfish breeding. Shisan C. Chen did not use that term. He just said that it is an intermediate color between brown and blue. I remembered my heart yearned for a more definite description or picture, “what sort of color is that? I would like so much to see it!”

In doing this project, I learned that there are two kinds of brown color in goldfish, and they are genetically different. I am sorry I cannot speak in a more scientific term since my training in genetics is very limited. But I know from my observation that when the two different brown are mated with blue, the result is totally different. I will not elaborate more on this since I have written about it several times on this blog.

So, this is the result:

Left side view:

Yes, it has brown stain, to make it a purple and brown ranchu. Some friends prefer to use the koi terminology to address this breed and call it ochiba ranchu. Yes, the head and perhaps the body could still be improved. I have focused much on the color and sort of neglecting the body conformation. But, for the color experiment, this is final.

Right side view:

Less brown stain on the right side views to make it a decent purple. I know for most people who are not familiar with this project, it is hard to differentiate this purple color with blue. So, let me give some comparison picture.

Comparison between purple and blue:

Yes, the purple has a reddish color compared to the blue.

Comparison between purple, blue and brown:

Hopefully, this project will be useful for the coming generation of goldfish breeders and hobbyist. Thank you for all the motivational support for this project. It is finished now 🙂

Yellow goldfish

Yellow Goldfish 2017

It has been a year since my last update. Just to review the project, I have bought some yellow commets. I crossed them with my double tail goldfish. I thought the double tail was of yellow color. Later on, the fish turned into mandarin orange color, and the eyes turned into strange color (perhaps albino). I did not documented it well, so I cannot provide any picture. Anyway, it came from the red white double tail goldfish. So, I will consider the gene as plain red / red white goldfish.

The result of the cross was 100 percent orange (red / red white), and 100 percent single tail. No yellow appeared. And no double tail at all. Some of the tail are long, some are short. Here they are:

As they matured, I did F1 x F1. The results are varied. I collect 2 batches of them. Here are the stats:

Batch 1:

Total 77 offspring. Single tail are 61 (79.2%). Double tail are 16 (20.8%). I can easily separate the single from the double early without the need to wait for the mutation process. However, some of them did not survive along the way. The survivor are 73. The desired yellow double tail are only 3 (4.1%). Orange double tail are 11 (15.1%). Yellow single tail are 14 (19.2%). Orange single tail are 45 (61.6%). So, the desired yellow double tail are only 3 pieces. Two of them are defect. That means, I keep only 1 from this batch.

Batch 2:

Total 541 offspring. Single tail are 432 (79.8%). Double tail are 109 (20.2%). The stats can be said as the same as that of batch 1. The survivor are only 287. Most of them are stunted and did not survive. From the survivor, the desired yellow double tail are 21 (7.3%). Orange double tail are 55 (19.2%). Yellow single tail are 57 (19.9%). Orange single tail are 154 (53.6%). From the 21 desired yellow double tail, 12 are defect. So I keep 9 desired results.

Here are some pictures to compare the yellow double tail and orange double tail. Pardon me for the bad pictures.

What type of goldfish are these yellow ones? They do not belong to the popular category such as ryukin, oranda or ranchu. They looks like wakin, perhaps with smaller body and longer tail. Actually, this is my regret. I think I should use a more popular type to cross with the yellow commet from the start. Anyway, it already happens. I need to decide what to do next. Shall I breed them just to get more uncategorized yellow goldfish? Or shall I cross them with more popular type? Perhaps I can produce yellow oranda, yellow ryukin, yellow pompom, or just yellow wakin. I will decide later.

Uncategorized

Sakura Coloration on Ranchu-like Goldfish

As mentioned before, I am trying to create tricolor metallic scale ranchu. This project directed me into crossing a tricolor metallic scale tosa with ranchu. By tosa I mean the ryukin which has no hump. It turns out that all of the offsprings shows a combination of metallic scale and transparant scale on the body. My conclusion is that the tricolor metallic scale I used is actually a variant of calico (transparant scale) goldfish which somehow develops metallic scale all over the body. This is not a genuinely metallic scale. The piece I have here shows minimum metallic scale. The body is mostly covered with transparant scale. And it looses the black color and turns into sakura color.

Don’t ask me about the body form resulting from this crossing. Horrible. This one is the best in terms of the back smoothness. The shape is not ranchu yet, that’s why I cannot call this a ranchu. The head resembles a tosa or ryukin since it has no headgrowth. And it has a hump! My first impression when I look at this piece is the image of a cow. But instead of a black and white cow, this is a red and white one.

The sakura color is impressive on this one. The red is truly red, it is not orange. And the white is milky white. Adorable. And the pattern is pleasing to the eyes. When the sakura is dominated by the red or orange color, it looks horrible to me. But this fish has the right amount of red and white combination, according to my perception. This is the sakura coloration I want to create, though not in this body form. The large red dots look like the brush strokes from an expert painter.

Uncategorized

A Sea-Horse?

People must think me mad to raise and post such a fish! This kind of fish will be culled out early in any farm in the world. No breeder will give it a chance to live since the defect is considered serious. It does not fit in any standard of goldfish, and so, it should not be considered as a beauty.

Actually, I do not create this fish purposely. I tolerate this because this is part of a project to create chocolate ranchu. As might be obvious from the body form of the fish, I was mating a red ranchu with a chocolate pompom. I cannot think of a better source to obtain the chocolate color than from a chocolate pompom. This fish is an F1, and is still a long way to go to become a decent chocolate ranchu. Last time I was mating a ranchu with a panda telescope in order to create a panda ranchu. It has shown some success after three and a half year. Now I am redoing the same type of project, except now with a chocolate pompom to create a chocolate ranchu. The difficulty is pretty much the same, I think.

So, yes, this fish is a monster to most of us, but to me, this is very valuable. However, as I behold this creature, I am getting an impression of beauty out of it. I immediately think of a sea-horse as I watch this fish. Perhaps it is due to the small dorsal fin in the posterior of the back. Does anybody have the same impression?

And this is a wild thought. Why not create a new goldfish category out of it? A sea-horse goldfish, maybe? I know that this will be a hard thing to accept, since it is a bit far from the normal goldfish standard. But if many people can see the beauty, why not?

hermantogoldfish

My projects on Goldfish

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