痘痕も笑窪 [abata mo ekubo]

A man in love mistook a pimple for a dimple.
~ A Japanese Proverb

Serious goldfish breeding is an extremely crazy idea in Singapore. The soft water mandates more frequent water changes and live fish food are very expensive. Goldfish spawn by the thousands and fries are very greedy. They grow very fast and seems to outgrow the ponds any time soon. The lack of land space in Singapore and the warm weather that decompose unconsumed food at high rate aggravate the situation.

Why not breed lesser? Compared to most other ornamental fishes, the yield rate for decent specimens in fancy goldfish is very low; it is necessary to collect the biggest spawn size that the breeder could possibly manage with the hope that one or few of the fries will turn out good. I have to be very objective to cull the fries and not fall in blind-love. If there are too many fries, more spaces must be planned to spread out the stocking density. The bad news is, after weeks and months of hard work and I may not even get a decent fish out of thousands!

Besides hard work and patience, perserverance is very important in goldfish breeding. A bloodline takes years to stabilize and many iterative processes of selective breeding to improve. The fancy goldfish could not have existed in the law of nature without human intervention. The attention is so demanding in various stages in the development of the TVR, that the Japanese use the term "making a ranchu". At this stage before the ranchu changes colour, it is known as the black baby ranchu (kuroko) or simply BBR.

Picture:
1) 9-day old fries
2) 11-day old fries