Marathon Culling! 馬拉松篩選

The only remedy against hunger is reasonable birth control.
~ Friedrich Durrenmatt, Portrait of a Planet

The May Day long weekend is no rest day for me. I was fully engaged in marathon culling the Dragon Eyes Pearlscales. Culling 7 day-old fries took a long time and strained the eyes as their tail shapes were barely obvious. I had no choice as the spawn was too big and no amount of food could pacify their hunger for long. Pearlscales are also especially greedy amongst the varieties of goldfish and expensive to feed so much daphnia and brine shrimps everyday.

Although the bright outdoor sunlight made culling easier, the humidity makes one very drained and tired. The one problem with spawning Pearlscales is that they are too prolific. Average spawn size is about 10 thousand eggs per fish. The following video shows the 4th batch with the second largest spawn size. No prize to guess correctly on the number of fries in this batch because I also don’t know :)

How I wish my TVR are as prolific as the Pearlscales. My objective for TVR breeding 2010 will be to improve the fertility and number of eggs. The bigger batches of TVR have now completely changed colour. They are gaining more appetite and it is time to accelerate the feeding a little.

Video: culling the Dragon Eye Pearlscale

Picture: Coloured TVR babies