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The Goldfish Gazette, Issue #002 -- How to choose goldfish for breeding
February 28, 2014


Goldfish Care Tips and Guidelines

A Free Monthly Resource For Goldfish Enthusiasts
February 2014
Issue #002

In this issue
How to choose goldfish for breeding
What’s new on the Website

www.about-goldfish.com/

Choosing goldfish for breeding requires a slightly different approach, especially when selecting from less than perfect stock.
Choose the wrong fish, and your goal of producing high quality prize winning fish will be much more difficult.

How To Choose Goldfish For Breeding

How to select healthy goldfish and getting them home safely is covered in some detail on the Website.

When you start looking for suitable breeding stock, you may not have much of a selection to choose from, so you need to select fish that have the greatest chance of producing a few high quality offspring.

You soon learn when you breed fancy goldfish that some desired physical characteristics are much easier to produce than others.

Using Black Moor as an example, high quality specimens should have the following characteristics:
  1. Velvety black coloration
  2. Large protruding eyes of even size
  3. Deep body shape with no physical deformities
  4. All fins present with no twists or bends
  5. Two caudal (tail) fins, fully divided, veil tail
  6. Two anal fins.

Some faults on a fish to be used for breeding can be acceptable if the fish is displaying a desirable characteristic that is hard to produce.

If we take the above example of Black Moor, some of the 6 characteristics are more important than others. Starting from the least important to the most important characteristic, they would descend in this order:

Two anal fins

From a brood of 100 high quality juveniles, you may get one third that have a single anal fin.
I wouldn’t reject a possible breeder because of this fault if this is the only fault it has. This fish should produce a reasonable number of offspring with two anal fins.

Two caudal fins, fully divided, veil tail

I would select the fish with the best caudal fin separation and shape, rejecting those with webbed caudal fins.

All fins present with no deformities

Missing fins are a genetic problem and don’t occur that often. Don’t use fish with genetic problems for breeding.

Large protruding eyes of even size

I would avoid fish with small or under-developed eyes. Uneven development isn’t such a problem as long as both eyes are well developed.

Velvety black coloration

Inferior specimens can be quite brassy when viewed from the side, especially in the lower belly region. What you are looking for are fish with white or silvery ventral (belly) areas.

Deep body shape with no physical deformities

This characteristic to me is the most important, and the hardest to achieve. Most commercial grade fish have bodies that are too long.

The conclusion is really this, focus on the hard to attain physical characteristics first before rejecting a fish because it has a minor fault.

On a final note, don't buy older fish to save the trouble of having to grow them up over a season or two.

If you are purchasing fish over a year old, make sure they are in the 2-4 year old range as fish older than this tend to be hard to spawn.

What's New On The Website

Goldfish Pond Setup

Last month we looked at the different options for building goldfish ponds.

This month I have added a page on how to set up a pond to minimize maintenance. Ponds are like aquariums, you can set them up so they are easy to maintain.
With the larger water volumes in a pond compared to an aquarium, you don't want to be cleaning it out every month or so.

Here is the link…Goldfish Pond Setup.

Comments? Ideas? Feedback? I'd love to hear from you. Just reply to this e-zine and tell me what you think, or what topics you want covered.

Next Month’s Topic

Goldfish Pond Filters - choosing the correct one.

www.about-goldfish.com/
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