Anyone have experience breeding Celestials?

[harzan]

I have crossed Celestial (long tail) to Ranchu and the off spring are now 1 - 1.5 inches, some are just starting to change color (that are metallic), and many have the long tail of the Celestial. If they have the Celestial eyes, when should they begin to be noticable?

Thanks,

Harris

[Sabine]

I think I read that it takes about 5 months to show.

[Fishdork]

Harris,
You keep surprising me by how similar our taste in fish is. Last October I bought one celestial and one bubble eye with the intention of crossing to a dark red and white ranchu to shorten the body and improve the color. Well, I haven't gotten a ranchu yet and it's about 10th on the priority list, so nothing. I expect the celestial eyes to be recessive. Some people speculate there could be one gene to make the eyes poke out and one to make them turn upwards. I doubt it's that straight forward, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are multiple genes involved and the second generation turns out much less than 1/4 celestial. I'm interested to see what they do in future generations.

Norm

[harzan]

Thanks Norm,

I find that not many like the blues, but they facinate me. I think we just like fish we will not see at every store that specializes in goldfish. I bought the Celestial as an ornamental, but it was a little active and I have a couple dark blue/grey (almost black) calico ranchu males....so I did and hand spawn and have hundreds. There are a lot of calicos. I will keep you posted as to what they become.

What are your blue Jays like? Calico with out red?

Thanks,

Harris

[Fishdork]

Harris has de-railed his own thread referring to recent private messages. Yes, I like to make fish I've never seen for sale. Yes, blue jays are calicoes with the blue mutation from blue metallics. My blue jay ranchu started as almost white fish with a blue and black pattern on the backs. At about 3 months now, a couple are pale blue on the sides too. They have much less blue than the blue jay comets which are a little younger. The comets were developed from midnight shubunkins and I think that makes them have more pigment and also does strange things to their guanine. Some of the calicoes are very metallic.

Back to the celestial crosses, if the celestial was orange, I would expect the young to lose black at a year or two old like the fish I showed in the blog "How to Make Calico Wakins" by Mikeno.

Norm

[bekko]

I cannot answer Harris' question, but offer this bit of celestial trivia....

There is a new paper coming out in Gene (journal) entitled An evolutionary origin and selection process of goldfish by Tomoyoshi Komiyama and others.

Trust me, the paper is not as comprehensive or exciting as the title would imply. They did DNA sequencing for various subspecies of Carassius and a half-dozen-or-so varieties of goldfish.

The one somewhat interesting result is that celestials appear to be more closely related to ranchu than telescopes. They suggest that ranchu may have been developed from celestials (rather than the other way around).

Harris may have done some culling (didn't you??) before I saw the young fish he refers to, but they all seem to have the long caudal peduncle of the celestial. I did not notice any that would pass for a pure ranchu despite the good conformation of the ranchu males. If the genes for celestial conformation are that strong (dominant?) then perhaps celestials really are more primitive than ranchu as Komiyama suggests.

-steve

[harzan]

I think 5 months is bit long for eyes to pop out as I have seen small fish at pet shops with eyes quite developed.

Anyone have experience and can remember how long it took for the eyes to develop?

The backs may not be all that thick since the males were calico ranchu and not tvr. I like Steve was surprised to see so many with the long tails. I have only culled out for narrow and/or bent tails so far. I look at them everyday though...wondering about those eyes.

Thanks,

Harris

[harzan]

The Celestial was white with small orange markings.

[George Washington]

Hi, I know this discussion is more than a year old but I do have experience of breeding Celestials. The eyes will start to develop at about 8 weeks and will take 4 - 6 weeks to complete. They come outward first and then swivel upward.
Of course this is probably temperature related, as is all goldfish culture but any that have not developed by 5 months should be culled.
Unequal eye development is quite common and in my experience the 'slow' eye never catches up so they too should be culled as soon as the unequal development is noticed.
In my strain it was not unusual to have a pronounced hump behind the head in well fed first year fish. This is fatty deposits and is usually lost in the first winter.
In my opinion celesials are a great fish for a novice fish breeder. The usual mistake of the novice is to keep too many fry and Celestials are easy to cull because the questions you ask yourself are answered Yes or No.... there are no 'maybes'...... so culling is straight forward and you can reduce numbers very quickly.
Has it got a divided caudal - Yes or No
Has it got any signs of a dorsal fin - Yes or No
Has it got a smooth back line - Yes or No
Has it got equally developed eyes - Yes or No
Has it got a broad head and broad peduncle - Yes or No
Has it decolored - Yes or No
very straight forward.
They are a very hardy fish.. mine stayed out all winter sometimes below ice, and they are not shy. They bumble about and are very endeering pet fish.
I saw some that came from cross with a lionhead or ranchu and they were very chunky fish with good eye develoment.
yours
George

[George Washington]

PS - Each season I always got half a dozen fish that had a single dorsal ray at the back end of where the dorsal fin should be. It sort of stuck up like a car arial.
If this was the fish's only fault I would keep it until it was about 5-6 months and then carefully pluck it with a pair of eyebrow tweezers. Did this operation loads of times and it never effected the fish.
PPS - to avoid a huge argment always clean your wifes tweezers before you put them back on her dresser!!

[Sabine]

I wonder if Harris has some new photos of these fish to share?

[harzan]

I have pics of the babies this year from the 09 hatch. pop eyes came out and you can see a vid at youtube.com...search "harzan808".

None of the 1st gen had eyes.

[George Washington]

Hi Harris,
looked at your video. Two healthy little fish but a lot of work to do with the line.

What do you mean the "none of the 1st generation had eyes"?

Did any eyes actually turn upward on any of the fish?

[harzan]

None of the f1s had eyes protruding....noticeably.

f2s had 20% +/- with pop eyes. a couple looked a little upward. I prefer they not look up. They seem so pitiful IMO when only looking up.

I might work on them...but who knows.:)

[TheTruth]

you never know with a cross but if you keep them at 80 degrees an feed large amounts of baby brine you may see eye development around 4 or 5 mos