But what is it?

Kinda fun to watch the little fishy develop. He or she seems to be doubling in size every 10 days or so. S/he has figured out that I’m the food guy and swims over almost every time I walk by now. Probably two months old and already begging for food like a real goldfish.

It’s too early to tell gender or much of anything else. Chances are it will be a fairly ordinary, possibly unattractive fish. If 100 hatchlings survived from one spawn, as many as 95 would be culled from a serious breeder’s program. Culled doesn’t mean killed, necessarily, but often does. Some might be sold online or to pet stores as pet grade. fish, around 20 or 30 percent, according to some online reports.

That would be 20 or 30 percent from a carefully managed breeding program. I guess that means little fishy has less than 20 percent chance of being pet quality, coming from the sketchy lineages of the fish in my tank.

There was an online discussion about whether a particular fish was a fantail or a Ryukin, which are two popular types of “fancy” goldfish, for any non goldfish people who may have wandered into this post. The two “breeds” are cousins of sorts and are somewhat similar except Ryukins have arched or hump backs.

I put “breeds” in quotes because I don’t think they qualify as breeds. I think “strains” might be a better term.

Someone said the fish in question might be a cross between a Ryukin and a fantail. That struck me as maybe a bit off, so I did a little dive into goldfish breeding. If someone breeds two golden retrievers, they can have high confidence that any puppies will be golden retrievers. Not so with goldfish.

Top of the line goldfish are statistical outliers, which is why some enthusiasts will pay hundreds — thousands in Asia — for show-quality fish.

From About-goldfish.com: “A large number of fry in any spawning will have faults caused by their dominant genes wanting to revert back to the original wild goldfish the Prussian carp.”

Some goldfish are not that ambitious. They just want to revert back a few generations. Fantails are a foundation stock for several types of fancy goldfish, including Ryukins. It seems there are a lot of Ryukins that have reverted halfway back to their fantail roots. I have a couple that likely took that route.

I don’t know how well this will be received, but when someone posts their fish online and asks “Is this a Ryukin or Fantail?” I will say, “Yes. Both. It’s not an either/or scenario. It’s a goldfish, a fancy goldfish that probably flunked out of a Ryukin show-quality breeding program but had enough redeeming qualities to end up in a pet store.”