Baby Goldfish Colouring

by JOAN
(NORFOLK ENGLAND GB)

I have 12 baby pond goldfish of various ages & sizes between 5 - 7 months approx. I have brought them indoors in an aquarium to over winter. They are between 2.5cms & 7cms approx. There are 4 obvious shubunkins, 1 white/pale gold. The rest and some of the biggest/oldest fish were black and now are silvery brownish and darker on their backs. Some have the odd sparkly scale on them.

My question is are they still likely to change colour to goldfish shades. They are now lighter/silvery from the bottom than they were. BUT will they stay like that or is there still time to become like the large up to 20cm and larger fish in my pond. They are either shubunkins, red & white fantails. red Comets, white goldfish, gold goldfish.

Another thing, All my pond fish have have beautiful long tails but none of the babies appear to have them. Will they grow?
Any help appreciated, thank you

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Grant's Reply
Hi Joan

As you probably already know, Goldfish come in several scale types, metallic (shiny reflective), calico (multi-coloured, not reflective), and matt, again not reflective, and usually with little or no colour.

The colouration stages for metallic Goldfish are dull grey (natural colour), change to darker colour, outdoors this can be black, then slowly fading from the belly upwards to a light gold, gold/white, red/white etc.

As they grow older these colours strengthen.

The calico shubunkins don't go through this change process, they just get stronger colours as they get bigger.

The only problem you will have is if shubunkins bred with shubunkins, because that produces all three scale types, and the metallic fish are very slow to colour or don't colour at all as they have lost the colour change gene.

If a shubunkin bred with a metallic fish, the metallic babies may have inherited some colour change genes, but they would probably be slow colouring.

To read more about scale types, click this link.

Regarding your question on tail length, yes they will grow longer tails when growth slows.
Having short tails now is a good sign that they are growing well.