Breeding Strategy: How To Create Metallic Goldfish From Calico Goldfish

Goldfish genetics, along with methods of manipulating them, are of particular interest to us at Ping Pong Pearlscales. Here we have provided a step by step guide to simplify an exciting prospect, creating Metallic Goldfish from Calico ones. The difficult part of this particular strategy is comprehending the colouration and demelanizing nuances. This method applies to every variant of fancy goldfish, ensuring a consistent and effective approach across all breeds.

Step One - Starting off with two Calico Goldfish, the outcome of breeding will follow this formula:

Calico x Calico = 50% Calico + 25% metallic + 25% matte.

In Pearlscales, there is the common exception of coloured mattes,which look identical to Calico Pearlscales, but this intricacy deserves its own blog post. 

Step Two - The offspring should be culled early for scale type, as although 25% of the fry are Metallic you will be left with a lot less after culling for deformities and split fins. In an ideal situation you will have good quality offspring of both genders, if this is the case then breeding the fry to each other will be sufficient to create a metallic generation and you can skip step three.

Step Three - If you only created good quality metallic offspring of one gender, or if the shape of the fry is inadequate, the best option is to breed the best fry(offspring) back to the parent of the opposite gender. This will be faster if the chosen young Goldfish is male as they can produce milt and exhibit breeding behaviour from as young as four months. If breeding a Calico parent with a Metallic offspring the formula looks like this:

Calico x Metallic = 75% Metallic + 25% Calico.

The 25% Calico can then be culled and Fry that demelanize should be selected to grow-on for breeding from these offspring.

Step Four - If the original Calico parents have an ample amount of black colouring then some of the fry will end up with brown colouring. Select the fish that change colour earliest as these fish will demelanize to white, red or sometimes yellow and cull the fish that aren’t decolouring at all if appropriate. In the event that none of the fry demelanize continue breeding the brown coloured Goldfish together until a demelanizing fish is produced, please note that in some cases Goldfish take longer to decolour and it may be worth the wait.

The pictures show a product of this method; the first is our Goldfish starting to demelanize and the second is the same Goldfish (the larger of the two) exactly a month later!

Step Five - You now have adequate decolouring Metallic Goldfish from either formula, continue breeding these fish with other Metallics (deepest reds and most attractive patterns are preferred) to develop your Metallic line.

Thank you for taking the time to delve into this post. We'd be thrilled to hear about your experiences with Goldfish breeding. What challenges have you encountered, and what successes have brought joy to your aquatic endeavours? Your insights enrich our community, so please feel free to share your thoughts!