Blue metalllic mirrorscale goldfish

[bwleung]

Hi Everyone,

Photos of my blue metallic mirrorscale goldfish from Australia.

Please see link:
http://mirrorscalegoldfish.blogspot.com/2011/10/blue-metallic-mirror-scale-goldfish.html

Specially for Harris (Harzan), as I meant to post him photos of blue metallic goldfish from Australia.

Kind regards,

Bill

[Cincy Ranchu]

hey Bill,

Curious on how this fish was developed. I also want to say, I have never seen a mirror scale before, just the Cunliffe print.. I have always pressumed that this fish was a cross to a related species. Very cool fish

[VeiltailGuy]

Looks similar to German scale koi marking...wonder how this is achieved?

[bwleung]

hey Bill,

Curious on how this fish was developed. I also want to say, I have never seen a mirror scale before, just the Cunliffe print.. I have always pressumed that this fish was a cross to a related species. Very cool fish

Hi Gary and Rick,

I communicated with Merlin Cunliffe here in Melbourne on this point before.

He was of the view that mirrorscale goldfish arose from hybridisation with german mirror carps when the owner, a German farmer in outskirts of Melbourne raised the two together in his fish farm.

However, I have my lingering doubts, and feel that it is just as easy for this scale mutation to arise independently in goldfish without hybridisation.

Q: How many people mix goldfish and mirror carps together and obtained fertile mirrorscale goldfish down the generations?

My humble reasons are:

OneRohner and Harris in 2009 of Max Planck Institute determined that mirrorscale arose from redundancy and substitution of a gene which determine scale formation. As discussed before, goldfish and European carps have 2 pairs of same genes. The same for zebra danio, unlike the Medaka rice fish.

When this scale mutation gene arises in Medaka, Rohner & Harris found that the Medaka embryos died, while the mirrorscale zebra danios and mirror carps survived, as the second pair of the same gene kicked in, enabling the fish to live, but with mutated and enlarged scales.

Two
Mirrorcale dace has been scientically documented in the UK literature. Mirrorscale goldfish exists elsewhere in the world; It has been documented in the UK owned by a GSGB member in Joe Smartt's Golfish varieties and genetics book. It has also been photographed in the Netherlands. The late Bill Parsonson of GSA told Merlin they existed in the US in the 1920s.

Three
Depsite the Chinese have managed to obtain fertile hybrids by crossing European carps and goldfish, it was exceptional and took a lot of dedicated efforts to nuture the cross, as the fertilility of the male hybrids were near zero.

Four
Chinese goldfish breed in the early 1900s documented an enlarged scale breed of goldfish (I don't mean pearlscale). The enlarged scale existed on the backs. The breed appears to have died out now.

On that basis, my humble view is that mirrorscale and leather goldfish arose independently and not a hybrid with Euorpean carp, it is an independent scale mutation in the goldfish that persisted as a breed.

There are mirrorscale and leather cyrpinus carpio carps and goldfish, mirrorscale dace and zebra danios. In time, there will be more fish breeds with mirrorscales as keen observers identify and breed them.

Hope that helps.

Kind regards,

Bill