How did the different goldfish originate?
About 100 years ago, a group of glamorous goldfish escaped into the Schuylkill river in Pennsylvania. They thrived and multiplied, but their children lost their gorgeous colors and became drab grey like their remote ancestors of Southern China. They grubbed around in the mud for their food and the water was soon spoiled for the native fish.
Goldie is strictly a glamor girl. She glides around her glass tank, trailing her graceful fins and letting the sunlight glint from her colored scales. She expects her home to be cleaned for her and food to be provided for all she has to do is to look beautiful. You can buy about 20 different varieties of goldfish, each more beautiful or more startling than the next .. and breeders know of more than 100 more varieties that are not on the market.
These glamorous creatures descended from golden carp which lives wild in 'chi streams of Southern China. He is a food fish and, in the remote past, the Chinese noticed that a few little fish had a bronzish tint or scales of gold or yellow. These little oddities seemed too pretty to eat, so they set them aside for purposes of admiration. They were the first goldfish.
Children tend to resemble their parents, even in the fish world. But each child also has its differences. The goldfish on display mingled babies together and produced/and, though each young fish was different, it also borrowed some features from its parents. A goldfish may lay 500 eggs. Many of the first generation looked like their wild ancestors but a number of them were goldfish. These were kept and they produced a still greater proportion of golden children. Soon all or most of the children produced were goldfish.
This first goldfish strain of the wild golden carp was bred in ancient China, Once in a while, a youngster was born with a longer tail that spread through the water like a veil or a fan. From them, the Chinese bred the fantail and the veil tail strains of goldfish.
In the 16th century, he Japanese began developing fancy strains of goldfish. The odd young ters, born with unusual fins, shapes or coloring were selected from each eeming brood and put together. With luck, a pair of oddities with, s y, calico spots of red, black and yellow would produce a few children with the same features. These children would produce a greater prop or ion of children with these features. All our goldfish are descended f om the drab golden carp and all the fancy varieties are developed y this method of selective breeding.
The goldfish cannot chew on solid food because he has no jaw teeth. He needs soft food and in the wild he grubs around in the mud for algae and scraps of decaying debris. A display goldfish will eat almost anything you put into his tank so long as it is in soft, bite sized morsels which he can swallow whole, But to remain healthy, he needs a properly balanced goldfish diet.