Culling and Fry Selection to Maintain A Linebred Strain Veiltail and Broadtail Moor Goldfish (2/3)

by David Linnemeyer& David Schleser

(no part may be published without permission of authors)

Culling and Selection of “Keepers”

Background used for culling – Usually white works best in order to see the fins of the fry but use whatever works best for you. The more light, the better. In our experience it is much easier to perform early culling in small batches when fry are viewed from above. When viewed in this manner it is a simple matter to see and remove the single, webbed and asymmetric tailed fish.

Runts/Size: Anyone who has raised a goldfish spawn knows that after a few weeks some fish will be much larger than others. Many times we have separated and given special care to great fry whose only fault was that their size was significantly smaller than the average. Each time we would think that if we separated these fish and gave them special care, they would catch up. We have never been successful. The lesson here is after a few weeks cull all fry smaller than the average size in the spawn regardless of how close to Standard.

Grow out ponds vs tank raising: After many years of breeding goldfish, (DS), uses ponds only to spawn and raise fry. (DL) uses tanks for the first couple of weeks then transfers to ponds. Fry grow, develop and color better in outdoor ponds/tubs. Usually they are in many more gallons of water than aquaria, thus providing more room per fish permitting one to delay culling until fish reach an age of 3 weeks which makes it much easier to cull.

First cull – One warning: When netting fry to the culling container be very careful and gentle. The fry are quite fragile and it is easy to accidently cause broken fins that never heal without scarring. As long as the spawn is not crowded, no hurry. Larger fish are easier to see and less prone to net injuries. But you should be able within two to three weeks post free-swimming to start culling of fry with serious faults, especially fins.

From two weeks on We have always been confronted with does one just continue to remove those fry who are keepers or potential keepers until the only fry left are discards or the opposite, only remove the culls? Now to some extent we do both. We remove the obvious culls and at the same time remove to another tank , or preferably to an outdoor grow out pond, any extraordinary fish that are guaranteed keepers. Eventually after many weeks we will end up with keepers and potential keepers. In practice how far we lower our standards in retaining potential keepers depends on how many fish we have in the guaranteed keeper tank. If we have few really good fish, we will need to keep more borderline fish in order to ensure survival of the strain. A point we have learned, sometimes the best fish don’t produce the best fish offspring, the offspring of their brothers and sisters of slightly lower phenotypic quality may be better.

We cull at different time frames depending on the characteristic. Regarding runts, they will often develop the adult form/look and long finnage precosiuously but will never amount to anything and should be culled as soon as spotted.

1.Body
For this characteristic we view the fry from the side in an aquarium, not from above.. From what we have read and experienced, once you lose body depth it’s very difficult to get it back. Body depth for veils/broadtails should be at least ¾ of the length of the body, (do not include fins). For all practical purposes, most of us will not have to worry about too much body depth. Holding on to the proper ratio of depth to length is the challenge. Body depth develops very slowly. Young fish are always more elongate or egg-shaped. We NEVER cull for body shape until the fish are at least 3-4 months old. If you do it earlier you will very likely be discarding some of your best fish. Additionally, the fish should have a graceful curve as pictured in the Standard. There should be no hint of a ryukin type body shape unless you are breeding for the oriental form.

2.Peduncle
very important - The narrow rear body called the peduncle supports the caudal fins and influences how the fish swims. Veils don’t swim gracefully just because they are veils, the peduncle area must have proper structure. We watch the fish over the months to cull for peduncle. When viewing from the top at a later date, verify the fish is pushing forward gracefully as it swims, not zig zagging from side to side. Importantly the peduncle must be structured so that the caudal fins are held high, higher than in an older fish. In time the weight of the lengthening peduncle will start to pull the peduncle area down. A young fish needs a strong peduncle structure in order to carry its caudal fins as high as possible. A common fault in veils is too short of peduncle resulting in nothing to carry the caudal fins high and the fish will not have the ability to push forward and swim gracefully. It is difficult to produce a great deep bodied veil with a strong enough peduncle to hold and balance the caudal fins against the body mass. Either the fish is weighted down by its caudal fins or almost rests on its nose. A good way of checking this is to startle the fish and see if it almost does a forward flip. If so the fish does not have balance between its body and caudal fins. Like deep bodies, it is hard to improve weak poorly constructed peduncles.

3a.Fins – Caudal Fins
– View from both the top and side when culling. Caudals should be divided all the way to the peduncle. We cull all joined and partially joined caudal fins. This is fairly easy to do with small young. Caudal length is very tricky. Fish with short and wide, (distance between caudal lobes), are the keepers. These fish will have caudal fins that appear much too short in relationship to the rest of the fins and body, maybe a little more than half the length of the body at one to two months of age. It’s very difficult to pick these fish for keepers and cull the more beautiful, at this age, longer finned fish. The problem is caudal fins just continue to grow. If you select fish with caudal fins as long as their bodies, in a year or two these same fish will be bottom setting as they will not have the strength to swim as they should holding their caudals high. The broadtail moors I kept from last year’s spawnings are somewhat over finned, even though I kept telling myself at the time to only keep the really short square tails. Other factors to consider are at what angle the caudal fins should be structured. Caudal fins should not be structured near a horizontal plane or vertical almost parallel to each other. See the Standard drawings. The bottom forward rays of the caudal fin should sweep gracefully backward, not in any way perpendicular to the body. Perpendicular caudals held on a more horizontal plane sometimes with the peduncle sweeping down are butterfly characteristics. Butterflys are beautiful but that is not what the goal is here. In our strains of calicos and moors we have found the butterfly characteristics to be very dominate and we cull ruthlesssly any fish that has such characteristics. Here again it is vital you view from the side in addition to the top view and the butterflys wil often be the most attractive and could slip through into your “keeper” tank. By the time the young reach half to three quarters an inch in length, you should be able to pick your all potential keepers from the spawn.

3b.Fins – Dorsal fin
- high, as high as body depth, never drooping at this age. If the dorsal droops or folds at this age, discard as this defect can be hard to correct. Most of the longer finned goldfish now available commercially tend to have the dorsal fin curved to the right or left and not rigidly vertical. We have no idea how this got started but we consider it a very serious fault and exceedingly difficult to eliminate once it becomes entrenched in a strain.

Above,not a good picture but a view of Bill Rossbach’s fish, 1974. Pure philly veils, Bill went with Al Thomma on the visit to Anderson where they were given some veils. Bill kept his strain much more pure than Al. Notice the very high dorsal and the rounded head with a small oranda like growth, a characteristic of the Philly veil which persisted for many generations.

3c.Fins - Pectoral, ventral and anal fins
- longer and wider than on for example a fantail. There should be no twists in any of these fins. The early length of these fins will help forcast the ultimate length of the caudal. Some hobbyists believe the width of these fins will give an indication of the future width of the caudal, (space between the two lobes in each caudal fin), The wider the ventral, pectoral and anal fins for example, the wider the caudal. I honestly have not paid enough attention to have an opinion. Anal fins must be double if at all possible due anal fin genetics. Single anal fins are difficult to get rid of once bred into your strain. As one aside, one of us (DS) has found that in a tightly bred line single anal fish with fully divided tails from double anal parents when bred to a double anal sibling will usually produce as many double anal young as a double to double anal breeding. That is the last thing I (DS) worry about when selecting keepers.

4.Movement
– A veil needs to be able to swim smoothly, gracefully forward with no drooping caudal fins. Other than picking fish with highly held caudals, you will need to cull for movement as the fish grows in size. I mentioned the importance of peduncles earlier and its relationship to movement. Difficulties relating to movement will become more obvious as the fish matures.

5.Color
– Too complex a subject for here but the highlights. Metallic reds should be as dark of red as possible. Moors as black as possible, you will see a difference in depth of color in a given spawn. A white or silver base on the stomach is preferable to an orange one. If using a metallic or matt to breed with a calico which we rarely do, cull all matt and metallic young, (bluebelly genetics are more complex, better to be covered by the most qualified of all, “bluebelly”). Calicoes tend to lighten as they grow older so picking darker colors when young with as much blue as possible is probably the way to go. We have been exceedingly fortunate that our present calico line holds colors well into adulthood. At present we have some 4 year old breeders that are as richly colored as yearlings. All calicos start out virtually colorless and slowly develop their coloration. Blues are last to develop because the ultimate hue depends partly upon the thickness of the epidermis and how deeply imbedded the black pigment is located. When on the surface color appears black, when more deeply imbedded, it appears blue. The average color depth in a calico spawn will often be lighter that their parents. Long time calico veil hobbyists sometimes pick calicoes for breeding so dark that they are almost unattractive. So don’t throw away dark sometimes unattractive calico young if their overall conformation is good. Point to be made, show fish are not necessarily best for breeding. The lighter colors at one to two years of age may be more attractive on the show bench before their blue starts to fade. So if showing, you may have to keep two types of calicoes as you cull, one type to show, one to breed. At the very young ages, about the only thing you can do is to cull the super light calicoes, matts and metallics.

6.“Type”
– Sometimes difficult to explain, a term often used in purebred dogs. A veil can have all its parts perfect to Standard but somehow the whole fish just doesn’t look right. In its total look it does not look like a “veil”. The dominate picture for a veil in my opinion should be grace and beauty, in structure and movement. For a broadtail moor slightly different, one has the somewhat grotesque telescope eyes making the whole picture more complicated but still a beautiful fish. Type is extremely important, judged as the fish matures, we are all judging by type often subconsciensly. Type is extremely important if showing. If the fish is flashy, has the correct type for its variety, it may often win over a fish that is structurally better but somehow is not as good at catching the judge’s eye. People who show dogs know all of this for a fact. The older the fish the easier to cull by type.

7.Selecting fish outside the Standard as keepers
-Up to this point we have been culling and selecting according to a Standard. But with a goal of improving each generation, other things must be considered. We have to know in our strain what is lacking and which good characteristics are recessive and the most difficult to achieve. If you find a young fish superior for such a difficult characteristic lacking in the strain, you may want to keep that fish for future breeding even if it has a significant flaw in another area. Example 1: This is an example from the dog world. More than 30 years ago there was a wheaten male named Glenngay Holliday. His coat was awful, wooly, pale, way out of Standard. But his structure was light years ahead of anything else in the breed. In spite of his coat, everyone bred their dogs to him because he was so dominate for superior structure that regardless of the quality of the dam that he was bred to, the offspring had greatly improved structure. Coats sometimes on the offspring sometimes took a step backwards but coats can be improved much more easily than structure. So in spite of his bad coat, he was one of the most important sires in wheaten history, frozen sperm still being used.Example 2: The dorsal fin on the majority of your current adults droop. You have a young fish with a super tall, strong dorsal, absolutely no droop. But this fish has a caudal not as square as you would normally keep. In this case, I would keep this young fish and linebreed to it in order to improve the dorsals in my strain. The bottom line is that dorsals are harder to improve than caudal fins, a fish in my strain with a super dorsal is much rarer than fish with good caudal fins. I would worry about the caudal fins later and try this fish in my breeding program. Example 3: Broadtail Moors, our favorite. Authors have a difference of opinion. (DL) Almost always, the moor with the best telescope eyes will also have the darkest color but will not have the squarest of tails. Likewise, moors with the best square tails almost always have less developed telescope eyes and not the deepest of color. Genetic linkages present. So if I found in my spawn a moor in the spawn with great eyes, dark black color and good square tail I would use it even if it had only one anal fin or twisted pectoral fins. (DS) All these traits seem tlines have great finnage but poor eyes, but that in my opinion is the result of breeders ignoring the eyes in selecting their keepers.