Metallic Bristol

[terryl]

Hi experience Bristal breeders: Do you cull away metallic color bristols even with good tail shape? I have two spawns a couple of months ago and after several rounds of culling, I am down to about 30 fish. Some of them, may be 5 to 6 fish, are green metallic color (one very dark metallic). I struggle whether I should cull them or keep them.

Terry

[johnatoranchu]

Hi Terry
I always look closely at metallics before discarding them but remember Bristol Shubunkins are shubunkins and therefore, by definition, are calico. Metallics therefore need only be kept if you are going to use them in your breeding programme so only keep them if their body shape, finnage and especially their tails are outstanding - the tails needs to closely resemble a capital "B". If any of the metallics have clear (shows as red) gill covers they are mock metallics and I prefer using them to normal metallics as in my experience they produce better calico coloured offspring - mated to calicos of course.
John

[Cincy Ranchu]

The trend is always to keep a few, some folks have started metallics colored lines in colors like red and yellow. You might interact with BlueBellyMandley on this page

[bluebelly]

My thoughts were to make colored metallic bristols to cross back to nacreous. I just did blue metallic to nacreous to see if I can improve the color of the calicos. I liked the metallics so much I now keep and breed all the metallic bristol colors,yellow,red,blue, blue/white,black and purple. Just sent 100 bristols to grow out ,blue/nacreous cross, let you know if colors improve.

[bekko]

If you cross a Bristol to something like a metallic comet, will any the offspring demelanize ?? Won't it take two generations to get metallic color ??

-steve

[bluebelly]

I have 4 to 11 years in on some of these metallics to set color,TAIL and body. Yes to your answer. Now that I feel comfortable line breeding the blue metallic bristols I want to see their influence back to the calico. My best cross may be pinkie to blue metallic? I find whenever I go by printed word as to what should happen I get my biggest surprise . When I did yellow shubunkins the fish peaked when I started to get yellow metallic fry instead of uncolored in the calico spawns.

[bigbettadan]

I am looking for metallic bristols with exceptional finnage, for a little project.......

Dan

[bluebelly]

Dan HI, If you want exceptional metallic bristols call John Barcelonna in California. When he visited John Parker , John made sure he got bristols from all the breeders. John and I split a shipment. John has excellent line bred and I have excellent hybrids.