New Year, New Beginning ~ 新的一年，新的開始

人生最大的樂趣是做人人都說你不能做的事。


The greatest pleasure in life is doing what other people say you cannot.
~ Walter Bagehot

A couple of the better ones

Finally I have completed most of the work of revamping the Oozeki Ranchu Club website to an all-new look-and-feel. For some of you who had enquired, I am sorry for the delay, the updates of the OARS are in place now.

Some updates:

Pearlscale:

My 3-month-old pearlies are 7cm to 8 cm long. They don't need a lot of my attention now that they are accustomed to bigger pellet food. I am glad that there are more fishes converging to my desired specifications. Pearl-like scaling for some of the better fishes has extended all the way to the peduncle joint.

Some seed fishes this year

TVR:

I had a few small spawns of TVR so far. The latest spawn was just four days ago while the first spawn was on 27th December 2012. Strictly speaking, by the Japanese classification, the fries in the first spawn should be Nisai this year as they were spawned last Year. What a way to lose their childhood like this :(

Gosh! These are
my Nisai!

The weather seems to take a 180 degree turnaround to be very warm and humid. Probably I could only expect bigger spawns in the later part of February. It maybe difficult to spawn the TVR, but this is the challenge that makes the problem even more interesting to overcome.

Glory ~ 榮耀

真正的榮耀將根深蒂固的散播，

虛假的幌子有如落花不會長久。

True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Ready to charge... 

With the festive mood in the air this time of the year, travelling on most roads is a bliss with much fewer cars. Presumingly many Singaporeans are having holidays overseas or just staying at home recuperating their energies for the new year ahead. I had my holidays too - just back from the cold winter in Korea for my family vacation. It was cold, indeed very cold in Korea and how I had wished that my Ranchus are hibernating in that weather!

Some of my local bred that would be
competing in the Nisai class

This is also the time of the year I got very excited to experiment on new techniques to condition my breeder Ranchus to spawn. Once again, it's the déjà vu of grappling with producing good quality and sizeable spawns. Alternatively, I could have taken the easier route to import Ranchus that are ready to spawn, but this is a last resort as I may have problem in maintaining my very own Ranchu bloodline in the long run.

The weather in Singapore is now optimal for spawning with huge temperature swings and very heavy rains, bringing about cooler days than most time of the year. I hope this would be the prelude to cultivating good quality eggs for the female Ranchus.  

Do look out for the Oozeki Annual Ranchu Show (OARS) on 1st January 2013. Now in our 12th year, this show will again be depleted of Oya entries due to a crisis two years ago. However, we have learned much and made good progress with quite some decent Nisai fishes to showcase. Hopefully these Nisais will close the gap for the Oya class in the following year.

It is a tough path to adhere to the traditional Japanese's show standard of categorizing our fishes by age rather than by their sizes, but we have learned to enjoy this challenge. The Ranchu art lies not only in keeping nice Tosai fishes but also in maintaining matured fishes beautifully year on year. All the Ranchus in the OARS are groomed from young imported BBR/CBR or locally bred in Singapore by our members. 

The OARS is a truthful and honest showcase of the Oozeki Club members' successes and failures in the Ranchu art for the year. To me, all the fishes that made it to the OARS are winners and a true pride and glory for their rightful owners.

Though competition entries are only restricted to club members, the public are most welcome to view and share their Ranchu journey with us in the OARS.

The time and venue of the show are:

1st January
12:00pm ~ 3:00pm
Telok Ayer Hong Lim Green CC
Upper Pickering Street


May I wish my readers a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year! 

Preparation

Just Remember... if the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off.
~ Trevor Myers

Photo at 7 days old - the single tails
grew the fastest compared to the fancy tails

What's wrong with the world today? Everything from the economy to morale values sucks! The weather sucks too - wackier than ever before, switching between extreme warm and humid to torrential rain. Such drastic weather posed a great challenge for outdoor fish keeping - within moments, I can be as charred as a camp fire log and then became as wet as a fish. Nevertheless, there was some window of opportunity in between cooler days to spawn my Pearlscales just before the weather becomes too warm and humid again.

The main reason to breed my Pearlscales at least twice a year is to ensure that I have fishes from different parent combinations and maturing at different periods to backup the breeding plan. The other reason is to get done with Pearlscale breeding so that I can wholly focus on the TVR breeding in the beginning of the new year.

9 days old

I had collected about 15,000 Pearlscale fries from 2 spawns. There is an urgency to push them very aggressively to grow so that I can cull them fast. However, due to the sheer number of fries, their growth rate becomes uneven as the supply of daphnia is erratic due to the drastic weather conditions. The fries which are the fastest to grab the food are the bigger ones and they are usually the single tails. These are also the runts and bullies that would nib the tails or even devour their smaller, albeit more regal siblings if they are not culled away as soon as possible.

Now that they are 1 month old and their numbers reduced to about 300 odd, I can take a slight breather since they are big enough to eat small pellets and tubiflex worms. Nonetheless, I still need to cull them fast as the Pearlscale is one of the most greedy varieties that can literally eat till you broke.

Month-old blue-brown
Dragon Eyes Pearlscales
approx. 4 cm

Next year in May would be the much anticipated biennial Aquarama International Ornamental Fish Show. I would be even busier in the Aquarama year as besides grooming the BBRs, I would be preparing my other fishes for show too. Goldfish, Betta or Guppy, 6 months is a good time to start breeding them or sourcing for some young potential fishes to groom for competition.