Contingency ~ 後備

延遲並非避免。

What is deferred is not avoided. 

― Thomas Moore

Auspicious Goldfish decorations
for the Lunar New Year

Since the beginning of the year, I have collected a few more TVR spawns, thanks to the onslaught of alternating rainy days and warm days which drove the Ranchus' libidos gaga. I am now trying to delay the spawning till after the Lunar New Year and as far as possible for the females to accumulate more eggs. There is still another few more combinations that I hope to try out before wrapping up TVR breeding for the year.

The supply of daphnia this year has been unpredictable, and I was forced to activate plan B - the baby brine shrimp (BBS) alternative that I have been deferring for years. The main reasons for not trying out the BBS sooner is my reluctance to mess up my home further and that preparing brine shrimp eggs for hatching every day also eats into my already meagre hours of sleep time. Heck! what to do with so many mouths waiting to be fed?

Some of spawn A, photo taken
when they were one month old.

Improvised beer dispenser
as BBS hatching gadget 
Cheerio!!!

Thanks to Richard who shared his experiences to hatch brine shrimps, I have gotten a good hang of it. The BBS will be my backup plan when I cannot acquire enough daphnia for the baby fishes. I am no longer worried about the supply of daphnia during the critical stages of BBR development, and I can continue to push the BBRs to grow in the few days of Lunar New Year holidays where there are no supply of live daphnia. 

In this blog post, I would also like to wish my readers: A Very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous Lunar New Year!

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!