Lots of things have been happening over the last month and a half. I have been getting eggs from the goldies about twice a week in small spawnings. The two nets I had the fry in were about 6-7 months old and one of them had an area in the net where the fry were escaping. I did not realize this for the first week untill my third batch of fry had totally dissapeared.

The other net kept getting drug down by the loaches and the big fry would get out. I fixed this by looping the string where you tie off the net over the metal pieces it hangs off the tank with. I lost 3 of my oldest fry one by one to this.

I now have one remaining fry that is seven weeks old and shares my birthday. In the same net with that one are three fry that are between 2 and 3 weeks old. The big guy seems to not care about the smaller guys unless it is feeding time, then he gets a bit territorial. The biggest guy is still mostely pink, but in the last week or so he is getting some spots of color along his back. His tummy area is all metallic silver. Mom has spangles so I am guessing that is what is showing on his tummy. No clues as to who daddy is yet. He has definitely learned that the toothpick in the net=food.

I got a new camera for my birthday so I have been taking lots of pics of everybody. Unfortunately the camera would rather focus on the net than the fry. About 800 pictures later I think I have gotten some decent ones.

Here is a good shot of the speckles along his topside.


The three younger fry with him still appear more greenish than grey/pink. One of them might turn into a pinkie. They also have a different look to the tail so I am wondering if their daddy might be the other male in the tank.

A few pics of the 2-3 week olds.




Here is a slightly blurry photo showing the size difference between the oldest fry and his netmates.


A couple more pics of the big guy. One of these is an ok shot of his tail conformation.



My only group shot of the three bigger fry all together.


In one of the new nets I have between 35-40 fry that hatched out sunday morning. There were 67 eggs I found in that spawning, the largest so far this year. Almost all of the fry are showing tiny double tails. The others are either moving too fast to tell or not developing quite as fast as the others. This batch seems to like to hang out on the side of the net closest to the tank light.

A few hanging around the day they hatched.


More fry the day they hatched. Some are looking for new perching spots.


A group shot from yesterday.


Closeups of a couple of fry from a group photo.



Besides all of these I have a third net added to the tank yesterday that now holds plants with about 45 eggs from yesterdays spawning. Today I can just see the start of fry growth inside some of the eggs. Tomorrow They should start to look ike smiley faces with two eyes and the curved spine. They should hatch out sometime sunday.

A pic of the plants with eggs attached.


I have finally talked my grandma into letting me get another 20-30 gal tank just for fry to grow out in. But since I injured my knee at the beginning of august I have been off work for a month and am now out of money. So guess what is the first thing I'm getting after I get back to work? I'm gonna need one by then If most of these guys survive. Not to mention the 29 gal fish hatchery downstairs that has most recently added about 20 cherry shrimp and 15 or so platty fry to its list of fry born in that tank.

Sorry for the extrordinarily long post but its been a long time since I've been able to share anything about my little ones.

Congratulations!!!!

You've taken great pictures! Super-cute fry, how exciting to have so many double tails too. Keep us updated on their progress

Your pics are fantastic! Especially the ones of the newly hatched, I know how tiny they are! Love the pics of the "big" calico too, so cute!

awww your fry are so cute they grow so fast as well

That big fry is soo pretty . I'll be interested to see what color he turns out with all that pink. He may even be white with a few black freckles which would be really cute. I love the 2 button eyes.

The fry pics are fantastic. So clear and even the shot of the eggs I can see exactly...it's so hard to take good pics of them. I'm sorry you lost some of the fry back into the deep but looks like you have plenty to keep you busy and proud for some time. Good luck getting another tank and with the new job, and keep us updated with pics all the way please!

Great pics! What kind of camera do you have?

Thanks Mom essentially has that coloring with a few small orange spots making her a calico. From one side she looks all salt and peppered.



Its a Cannon PowerShot sd 1000

Here are pics of the eggs from this morning. The first one is a good shot of what a fuzzy egg looks like, and a not so good one of what healthy eggs look like. The second one has 9 healthy eggs. Can you find them all?



Healthy eggs.

i wish my fish would spawn

I wished that for almost a year. Now I just wish they would stop.

The latest batch of fry hatched out early Sunday morning. I fixed the filter return with a piece of a 2 liter bottle so the current is redirected towards the back of the tank instead of the net with the youngest fry. About half of the ones I can see are starting to cling less and swim around a bit. Tomorrow they will get their first meal offered.

I started feeding the net with the oldest fry crushed up omega one sinking goldfish pellets instead of the hikari firstbites. The biggest fry seems happier to get more of a mouthfull with each bite. I noticed their poos are much more substancial after the change of food too. The smallest of the three younger fry in that net has dissapeared. I suspect that it might have been eaten since it was not developing as fast as the other two of the smaller fry. It was three weeks old and the size most of my week olds are now.

Well tonight we found the first fry that died. My siblings discovered it floating in the fry net. It was from the group that is two weeks old tomorrow. I hope this is not going to be a trend for that group. All of the fry previously that "died" just dissapeared so they either escaped the net or possibly got eaten by a netmate. This is the first time we have seen a dead fry.

On a brighter note the oldest fry is showing a stripe of orange tinge at the top of its tail. This appeared about two days after I started feeding that net crushed up goldfish pellets instead of the powdered fry food.

From the top the week old and two week old fry look almost the same except a slight difference in tail size. But from the side you can tell the two week olds are filling in more and look slightly less like sticks with tails.

Sorry about that. But it seems to be the natural selection 'strongest will survive' common theme with fry. I found distinct monthly points when deaths would occur . You seem to be doing very well with them. Let us know how they like the homebrewed fryfood

We made the first batch of fry food today. My 11 year old sister helped. We crushed, ground, and mixed everything in my mortar and pestle. This batch contained ground up Omega One sinking goldfish pelets, garlic, peas, and one frozen cube each of bloodworms and BBS. The entire batch made about two tablespoons worth of mush.

Fed all of the fry lunch of the mush and everyone who got a piece liked it. The largest fry followed the drops all the way to the bottom of the net to vaccum them up. The smaller ones went after the floating pieces but still have not figured out that food will sit on the bottom of the nets.

For ease of future feedings and to prevent most of the food from dissolving in the water right away, I turned the rest of the batch into gel food using about 1/3 of a packet of plain gelatin. Then I spread it out thinly so it was maybe 1/4 inch thick across a piece of plastic wrap. After it finishes setting in the fridge I will cut it into little cubes and freeze.

If the fry adjust well to eating gel food as their main diet I think I will add zucchini to the next batch.

All the big fish in the tank got the leftover peas and they all seemed to enjoy that, even the loaches.

oh oh i counted all nine fry do i get a prize

My oldest fry will be 2 months old tomorrow! He is developing more orange along the top of his tail now. Each day he changes a bit.

I discovered that one of the smaller "big" fry in with the oldest has something of a deformed/ funky tail. The top lobe looks normal but the lower lobe on both sides looks like it either got chopped off or did not grow fully. The bottom is almost a slip of a spike that is sorta curved/ curled downwards, instead of nice and rounded. That fry has no problems so far with swimming and such so I decided to leave him for the time being and see how he develops. I saw this when I transferred the fry to clear rubbermaid tubs so I could thouroughly clean out their nets.

All of the other fry so far look normal. Some of them are still so small it is really hard to see their tail formation. I can tell there are about 3 distinctly different tail shapes in the fry. Mom has an almost triangular tail with some division of top and bottom lobes. Daddy #1 pearscale has the triangular tail with no lobe seperation but the ends are longer than the middle. Dad #2 the black moor has a much longer flowy tail with definite top and bottom lobes. Some of the fry look like the moor's tail, some almost appear to have little cotton tufts for a tail all rounded from the top view, and others have the distinct lobes but the tail looks different maybe flared outwards a little more or less than the first group.

I can't wait till I can tell who the dad is for some of the fry. I know that most likely some if not most of the fry I may never be able to tell completely. I am assuming that both the telescope eyes and the pearscales are recessive genes in goldies. It would be really cool if I ended up with a fry displaying both traits, but I know it is highly unlikely.

Hmm, what type of goldfish is a fancy that only displays the double tail and nothing else particularly different or special?

The 2nd month is usually crucial for color development as you probably concentrated on giving proteins to the fishes before. Usually these colors will be produced in the third layer of the goldfish's skin which is permanent coloration. I suggest blood worms rather then brine shrimp at this stage as your fishes are now beginning to utilize color pigments. Perhaps you can also start utilizing spirulina flakes.

A double-tail with slightly curved backs are known as Man-yu. (Although most of the people here at kokos will think it's a ryukin, it is very common in Asia so it borders between a fancy goldfish and a common, much like a Wakin)

A double-short tail with a straight common like back would be a Wakin. (As stated, it is very common in Asia)

An arch back with a sharper angle at neck to backbone is a ryukin.

A straight back with long tails are usually culled or sold off as those tend to have no grace in them, or as much grace as a boomerang due to the tendency of the tail flowing downwards giving them a boomerang like image.

Almost forgot, there is the fantail which has a slightly curved back and a deeply angled double lobes on the tail.

The gel food that I am feeding the big guys has blood worms in it. I tried some small bits of algae wafer and they did not like that. I could possibly switch from bbs to a frozen shrimp/spirunela algae cube in the next batch. By that time I am guessing that all the fry will be old enough to be eating the gel food as their main food.

Thanks for the info on the different types of doubletailed goldies. I am guessing that if I get pearlscale/ moor crosses, the only true fancy trait they will display will be the double tail. The fry are still too young to tell though.

Hi,
How cuuute! I love them. Congrats!

The little ones are being upgraded to a tank of their own this weekend. I got a deal on a 29 gallon kit and I can pick it up either tomorrow night or saturday. For now I am going to go bare bottom but put a bag of gravel from the big tank in there to help the cycle along. After the tank is cycled fully I will dump the gravel back into the tank it came from. I am also thinking about putting a bunch or two of plants in baby food jars so the fry have somewhere to rest, and they can nibble on the algae growing on the plants.

I think I have figured out why so many fry were dissapearing. After I lost (couldn't find) half of my remaining 3 week old fry I moved them into the net with the big guys thinking that there must be a hole in the net somewhere I wasn't seeing. Later that day when I fed them I saw mom come up and suck at the bottom of the net trying to get food. She killed one of the fry with her first three attempts by bashing him repeatedly against the bottom of the net. Her fourth attempt sucked his body in two pieces through the net and not a trace of what had happened was left. I was really mad at her. So I am guessing this is why I seem to lose the fry that hang towards the bottom of the nets.

I now have 5 fry in the big net, and about 18 left of the youngest group. The big net has the now one and a half inch long (with tail) two month old fry. It also has two fry that are now one month old, and two fry left that are almost four weeks old. One of the one month old fry has a funky tail. One of the younger fry in that net has what almost looks like two squared for a tail. The biggest fry is getting some orange in his tail. He is also rounding out a lot and getting chubby. There looks like one of the smaller fry in that net will be a calico. Two are that greenish color, but seem to have more of a gold tint under the green now. The last one is very dark, I am guessing that it might turn out to be mostly black as its first coloring.

Sometime this weekend I will make my second batch of fry food. This time I am going to put the following into it:

Crushed Goldfish pellets
Garlic
Frozen bloodworms
Frozen BBS
Frozen krill
Deshelled peas
Zucchini
Possibly crushed algae wafer

Here are some pics of what the big guy and his netmates looks like now. Don't mind the specs on the water, most of these were taken at feeding time.

The big guy and one of the one month old fry.


Big guy's face


Here you can see some of how rounded his belly is becoming.


The color on his tail.


This is a shot of the fry with the funky tail. Notice how it is pointed and there appears to be little or no lower lobe.


The "square tailed" fry. This one is the darkest by far in the older net.


This is a closeup of the other one month old fry, the one with a normal looking tail. This fry happens to have the longest tail in proportion to its body at this time.