BLUE GOLDFISH

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1788, 29 July 1926, Page 6

BLUE GOLDFISH

HIGHLY PRIZED BY FANCIERS. There are few readers, no doubt, who have come across a goldfish which is entirely blue. Yet such specimens have been bred by fanciers, amongst whom there is always an ambition to excel in this direction (writes A. E. Hodge, F.Z.S., in the Daily Chronicle). These blue goldfishes—the rarest and most valuable of all fancy forms are of the variety known as “scaleless,” on account of their scales being so transparent as to be scarcely noticeable. They have not the metallic lustre of the ordinary kinds but possess a beauty of their own, their delicate hues appearing as though they had been painted in water colours. Not only in delicacy but in variety of colouration do these scaleless fish excel, for in addition to the blue they may be adorned with purple and lavender, whilst they develop a much deeper and rich red —of an ox-blood tint — than their deeper' skinned brethren. A combination of hues, termed ‘calico colours,” and highly prized by fanciers, comprise irregular blotches, or spots, in shades of lavender, blue, red, yellow, brown, black, and grey, scattered all over the body or arranged in fantastic patterns, with, sometimes, small red and black spots on the white fins. As a rule, the more blue on a fish the greater its valuq, but, though wholly blue specimens have been cultivated, these have, unfortunately, been lacking in the degree of development of form and fins demanded in the case of those aristocrats of the goldfish world. Amongst two dozen fishes of the same brood in my possession, some are developing the grotesque projecting eyes of the telescope goldfish, whilst several of the “calico” specimens are well splashed with blue. These “blue-blooded-gentry” are not likely to increase their cerulean adornment however, for, unlike young of the ordinary goldfish, which may take a year to attain their full colours and are always liable to change, the scaleless young pass directly, within a few months, from the dingy hues of babyhood to their final livery.