My leather goldfish update

Hi,

Of my ten leather goldfish, one has died (second largest) after my heavy water change when I got back from Hong Kong in the end of October. Bummer...The rest are OK.

Five of the nine leathers have de-coloured or are de-colouring. Of the remaining four, one is likely to de-colour, ie, the largest one. The remaining three show no sign of de-colouring at present.

For the leather goldfish which have de-coloured, one is orange, two are golden yellow, two are light beige yellow, one of the beige yellow is the leather with the most complete set of fins. That is, the one with the dorsal fin in the first two leather goldfish that I purchased. The other finless leather from these two is still bronze green in colour.

Here are quick snaps of them in their own tank, so clarity is not great, as I didn't take them out and photograph them individually in clear water. Haven't got time at the moment.

PS: I haven't seen anymore leather goldfish since July, when I acquired these two batches. They are still very precious to me, as I really don't know how many leather goldfish really exist in the world, at least from the view point that they are recognised and the leather breed being maintained.


Best regards,

Bill

© Bill L 15 November 2009

Hong Kong: Goldfish Street or Tung Choi Street, Mong Kok

Hi,

I was in Hong Kong for two weeks during the end of October 2009, here are the photos of my trip at Goldfish Street, Mong Kok.

The most memorable experiences at Goldfish Street were seeing some huge Ryukins and Orandas, in excess of 15 inches and the large black comets (really hybrid carps). These black comet "goldfish" did not have barbels but they definitley weren't goldfish. They were also around at least 17 inches in length.

Also among the non-goldfish: really eye-opening were seeing a sturgeon fish hanging among the bags (bag on right at the topmost photo in this blog) and seeing the Red fin giant gouramis (Osphronemus laticlavius) live! I haven't seen them yet in Australia.

And how dirt cheap they were, AUD $1 = HKD$7 or USD $1 = HKD$7.76,...

A related post on koi photos is in my Mirrorscale koi blog.

The shop vendors generally didn't like people taking photos, some shops had signs up saying no photos. I took as much as I could.

PS: I did not see any blue phoenix eggfish or mirrorscale or leather goldfish in HK.

Best,

Bill

© Bill L 15 November 2009

New Leather goldfish (more clearer photos)

Leather goldfish

Out of a tank of about 80 goldfish, I managed to find 8 more leather goldfish and 2 more mirrorscale (linear) goldfish on Saturday 25 July 2009.

This batch has a lot of the finless leather goldfish (except the tail), and very similar to the one I once kept more than 15 years ago. However, these 'finless' leathers are still more steady in their swimming abilities than the one I had. They are also healthy despite their deformities.

Furthermore, in this batch of leathers, the pectoral fins are more often reduced to stubs, instead of small deformed pectoral fins like the other 2 leathers I had (this includes the fully dorsaled leather fish, which is the fish in the right of the top photo which shows them still in the bag. The middle photo in the bag shows the leather with one dorsal rib, and an orange/brown one underneath. That is the most coloured one out of this batch of leathers. The ones I saw and the one I had in the early 1990s were fully depigmented.

The 'bottom up' photos show the stubs when compared to the linear goldfish, ie, missing ventral and pectoral fins. They also show they are not blue bellies (ie, mock metallics or pseudo matts), but are just metallic goldfish if they had scales.

In brief, (See my March blog for further genetic details of leather goldfish), the leather goldfish is a further scale variation from the mirrorscales. Unlike mirrorscale, which shows a single variation in the s gene (which determines the location of the scale), leather goldfish requires variation in 2 genes in combination, the s and n gene (n= nude, no scale). Otherwise no leather goldfish can result, thus explaining their rarity. Apart from the fact that farmers may discard them as they are often deformed.

Their lack of finnage is the same as encountered in European carp c carpio, but in carp this is not as severe as what we have in goldfish (Kipichnikov (1937) investigated this in detail for c carpio). The lack of fins is due to biochemical inhibition, reducing effect on various organs (termed pleiotropic effects from the scale gene mutation).

One of the leather is coloured orange brown (shown most clear in the bag photos), and another a tinge of yellowish/orange brown, the rest were generally wild bronze to olive green. Some are very stocky in built. I have now a total of 10 leather goldfish at the moment.

Two out of the ten leathers that I got have complete dorsal fins, the rest have one to two hard rays in the dorsal to others having no dorsals at all.

There are both males and females in this batch of eight leather goldfish.

I took about 50 photos and they are much clearer in quality this time round (some shown here).

The smallest fish out of the 10 goldfish I bought this time round is the smaller of the two mirrorscale goldfish, it is just under 1.5 inches.

The chance of me maintaining a line of leather goldfish is now more hopeful as now I have a good quantity of them and sufficient variation in genetic material to avoid too much inbreeding.

© 27 July 2009 Bill L