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

Got Murphed Again? - 莫非墨菲?

I never had a slice of bread,

Particularly large and wide,

That did not fall upon the floor,

And always on the buttered side.

^{~ published in an American newspaper in Norwalk, Ohio 1841}

墨菲定律 ~指詼諧的經驗之談，其要點為：任何事情都不象看上去那么簡單；任何可能出錯的事將出錯。

What a busy week I had struggling with the crazy weather! The period of April to May are the seasonal hot spells in Singapore with temperature reaching a high of 34 degrees celsius. The afternoon is often very warm, extremedly humid and windless, there may be sudden rain but it usually provide no respite for both people and fishes. I do not feed my fish in the afternoon and I provide more shade on the ponds to keep the water temperature cool. It is so unbearable in the outdoor that I would only work on the ponds in the cooler early morning or the late evening.

Sometimes, I can't help but marvel at the mischiefs of Mr. Murphy. The day I forgotten to shade one of the ponds, the sudden surge of temperature to more than 34 degrees celsius had caused most of my fries to change colour too early. I also got a "hand slip" scrubbing a pond and injured my neck and shoulders. Immobilized for a few days, some fishes got sick from overcrowding because I couldn't cull fast enough and change water. Two of the fishes I earmarked before were confirmed to flunk as show fishes - one with nice tail has a bent head while the other with nice head has a bent tail :( What luck! Anyway, these two fishes will be my seed fish candidates.

Come next year, I will breed more so that Mr Murphy would not have time to sabotage all the fishes :)

Pictures:
1) Fries that change colour too fast due to the warm water.
2) BBR with a bent head alignment.
3) BBR with a bent and overlapped caudal tail.

笨鳥先飛早入林

A clumsy bird has to fly first to get to the forest earlier
~ A Chinese proverb

A pair of Collared Kingfisher has been stalking me whenever I do water change or culling every morning. This is a sign that my place is looking like a fish farm. Today, I have decided that I have enough TVR fries for the year. Besides the smallest batch that is 5 days old now, I still have 6 batches of fries including 1 batch of calico TVR. I reckoned that with my space and time constraints, I can only manage this number of fries. Anyway, I have fulfilled my goal to complete the collection of TVR fries earlier so that I can focus on the Aquarama 2009 Goldfish Competition and the breeding of my new variety Pearlscale.

I am puzzled why the pearlscales are much more prolific than the TVR. Some of my Pearlscales had spawned 2 days ago. If the hatching is good, I would have more than 20 thousand fries. Pearlscales normally peaks in 1.5 to 2 years old so the spawn today is to prepare for Aquarama 2011.

Pictures:
1) One of the Kingfishers which has been stalking me.
2) Culling the Calico TVR - black background is easier to see the tail shape.
3) Smaller batches of TVR fries