This morning I have had three spawning of my Bristol Shubunkins, to be totally selective on the pairs I have hand stripped the females and males. I have three separate containers full of eggs and have had to set up two new 4 foot by 2 foot 6 inch tanks to hold the prospective fry. I will post pictures of the young fishes development as I go. One of the females has never spawned before and she is three years old, as a youngster she was the star, winning best bristol at three of the major shows but now looks a bit raggedy but still a beautiful fish. Fingers crossed I should have the fry hatching out by Wednesday. I will keep you posted.

Good luck with the fry Chris, congratulations on the spawning. I look forward to seeing some photos.

__________________

Binge drink extraordinaire

Great news Chris, good luck with them fella!

Good luck with the fry, can't wait to see them!

congratulations Chris

so is hand stripping just your way ? or is it common with the fancy breeders within the hobby?

__________________
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")♥

Congrats Chris How long would it normally take for your fish to mature to breeding status?
I would thought 3 years was enough, 2 years for a male fish.

Congrats chris as a fancy goldfish keeper/lover myself i cant wait to see some pics.

Usually I use Males at yearling stage and Females at two years old, this female never showed any signs of breeding at 2 years old and I thought she was barron.

Hand stripping is just my way of being specific when breeding and it means a much higher fertility rate. Flock spawning means that you need a higher ratio of males to females and fertility is very hit and miss, when breeding for showing the returns are so low from any spawning that when you have more fry to select from you should have more fish of show quality from the spawning. (I wish!!)

Really? yearlings, thats some going for a male cyprinid.

Some of my fry when they were 7 days.

There are only about 50 fry in the pic, the rest of the orange dots are daphnia. The live daphnia have come through the back of the partition when the adults were being fed.

The week old fry were chasing the daphnia lol, quite a novelty to watch, they were about a third of the size of the daphnia.

The white disc shaped thing in the pic is not a UFO, its my lamp shade reflection lol
Attached Images

Attached Images

Goldfish fry 7days.jpg (29.8 KB, 84 views)

The fry started hatching this afternoon. The male used was hatched last april and the female is an older female full of colour, (I will post photos of the parents later). The fry are only just hatched and will not feed for a couple of days,their first feeding will be of newly hatched brine shrimp for the first week then they will move onto cyclops and sifted daphnia. I will take photos at regular intervals to show the development of the fry and point out the culls that are sorted according to colour first and finnage later. The photo is as near life size as I can make it, the dark slithers are the newly hatched fry.

Attached Images

Bristol fry.jpg (39.0 KB, 80 views)