And then there was one.
I haven’t seen the smaller of the two fish for several days. There was no floating body to be seen, but I figure the snails would have eaten him if he fell on the bottom of the tank. I guess there’s a high mortality rate for goldfish fry, so I can’t be surprised. I’m assuming he’s gone
The survivor looks good to my untrained eye. He’s started eating from the surface instead of just eating little pieces of food headed toward the bottom. Something I read said to feed them plenty and often, so I do. But I think I’m mostly feeding the snails. He’s getting enough nourishment to grow and is now almost an inch long.
He hides every time I slide the cover off the tank to feed him. I’m not sure how long it will take before he figures out that I’m the food guy. He still doesn’t look like a goldfish, but he looks like the pictures of other goldfish fry. I’m anxious to see what he, or she, looks like down the road. The mother is probably a red-cap oranda. The father could be any of a handful of suspects, from another couple of Orandas, one who is all orange, one who is white with a yellow cap to a calico fan tail.
One of the interesting things about raising goldfish is that you never know what your adult fish will look like. My big orange Oranda was black and red when I got him, but that changed as he grew. Right now, the little guy is tan. Chances are pretty good that whatever color he first displays will just be a phase he’s going through. A lot of small goldfish seem to a lot of big, black areas, that often fade to orange. I see people complaining online about expensive panda orandas that turned into more common colors. Orandas are the goldfish sometimes described as having a second brain growing atop their heads. It’s known as a wen, which I think is Chinese for cap. The panda version is some combination of black and white. My brother had a panda oranda he named Amanda.
Back to my little fry guy, there’s some chance he’ll be an oranda and a much greater chance he’ll be something else. I just hope he stays healthy and grows. I won’t be surprised, nor disappointed if at some point down the road I say, “This kind of homely guy over here was conceived in this tank and I’m pretty sure that’s his mother over there.”
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