Fancy Goldfish - Wakins and Watonais

[WaterGardener]

My Watonai are from a person in Florida. His email is (e-mail address removed) if anyone is interested. (He gave me permission to post that here and I wouldn't have done so otherwise.)

The fish I got a few years back were and still are very healthy and were packed and shipped well. I've had no problems at all with them and couldn't be more pleased.

I wasn't looking for show quality and wouldn't know that if it jumped in my lap, so I don't have any idea about that. But the fish are healthy and beautiful and that was what I was looking for. When I got mine, his prices were more than reasonable. I do know that he got some of his original stock from Blackwater Creek and some from Raingarden.

If you are looking for these fish he is a good source and a good guy, in my opinion.

 

[Mmathis]

Thank you, all for your purchasing input, and thank you @AlyssaFish for starting this thread! I’m starting to get excited about Watonai and Wakin again!

 

[Nevermore44]

There are wakin on Ebay all the time.

How about a pond of jikins! though you might need some extra $$ laying around

 

[j.w]

I had to look those up @Nevermore44 as I had never heard of them. Very pretty but yes I bet lots of moola!

 

[AlyssaFish]

Dandy Orandas had jikins from time to time! I am not as fond of their tail shape as I am of wakins or watonais, but they are really cool.

 

[AlyssaFish]

We talk about jikin like they're expensive when people here have thousand dollar koi! XD

 

[WaterGardener]

Bo Zhao in Georgia breeds them as well, Jikins that is. www.zhaosfancies.com

He has some beautiful and unusual fish.

As for koi, a thousand dollars would be cheap to some koi owners! I would have to guard my pond 24/7 if I had anything that expensive in there!.

 

[AlyssaFish]

I have talked to the watonai guy! He says much of his stock is calico, with some blues! I believe he meant metalic blue, not calico blue.

This is very exciting!

 

[WaterGardener]

I have a calico from him and a fish that was yellow with blue all along his back. As the yellow fish has gotten older he has lost all that lovely blue and now is all yellow except for one bright red spot. He's still beautiful and I have a soft spot for yellow fish, but I do miss that blue. He's probably the nicest one of the ones I have.

He does have very beautiful fish, no matter what colors they are, or turn out to be.

 

[AlyssaFish]

I have a calico from him and a fish that was yellow with blue all along his back. As the yellow fish has gotten older he has lost all that lovely blue and now is all yellow except for one bright red spot. He's still beautiful and I have a soft spot for yellow fish, but I do miss that blue. He's probably the nicest one of the ones I have.

He does have very beautiful fish, no matter what colors they are, or turn out to be.

Yellow fish are rare and gorgeous as well! Plus, only royalty used to be allowed to have them!

Blue is such a difficult color for a fish to keep as it ages! You may already know this, but I will explain anyway.

When a metallic scale (not calico, or matt) fish is born, it starts off a deep olivey-coppery color that resembles the coloration of related wild carp. As the fish matures, it goes through a process where it looses all that dark pigment, callle demelanization. This cases all the dark pigment to intensify, turning the fish almost black. Then the black coloring fades, usually starting at the belly and creeping up the sides. Eventually, the entire fish is orange, red, white, or yellow--the stable goldfish colors.

A metallic black goldfish, like a black moor, occurs when the genes for the demelanization process only call for a partial demelanization. The process begins with the fish going black, just like as before, but then the process stops and the fish does not complete the transformation. However, because this process can be so slow and is very unpredictable, it's a gamble that a fish will stay black its entire life.

Blue coloration is caused by dark pigment, but instead of it being concentrated in the center of a cell, making the fish appear black, it is spread throughout the cell, creating a blueish color. Blue fish are just fish at another stage of the demelanization process that has stopped. The same is true of "chocolate" or "purple" fish, which are really just blue fish with a base color that has more red or yellow in it rather than the non-pigmented (white) base color of a blue fish.

This is why calico is so popular. Calico fish are a mix of metallic and matt scaling. For reasons I'm not exactly sure of, black coloration is more stable in calico. It is not entirely stable, however. When a calico fish loses all its black coloring, it is often called "sakura." White and red, with a mix of matt and metallic scales. In matt fish, the black coloration can also be seen from deeper inside the fish. This causes what is called "blue" for calicos. Rather than looking like the deep gray of the metallic blue, calico blue can actually look like a sky blue shade.

So there's some regurgitated information on goldfish coloration! I hope you enjoyed it.

 

[AubreyG]

My four wakin survived last winter, as did my three orandas and four telescopes. We didn't have more than a day or two of frozen over at a time, but I don't think my deicer kicked on at all. I just had larger airstones running. They're quite the pigs but not as friendly as my other fancies.

I believe the pond store I got them from sourced them from Blackwater Creek in FL like the rest of their fish. She had no idea what they were but they were one of the last fish available at the end of the season for her order and was overjoyed when I came in asking if they every got them.

 

[Joni Franciskovic]

I have both wakin and watonias here in Ontario Canada I got from koi valley in Ontario. I have calico wakin, sanke color wakin and blue opal watonia (black and white only) They all wintered well in my pond zone 5.

 

[AlyssaFish]

I have both wakin and watonias here in Ontario Canada I got from koi valley in Ontario. I have calico wakin, sanke color wakin and blue opal watonia (black and white only) They all wintered well in my pond zone 5.

That's so cool! I've never seen a blue opal watonai before! Just comets!

Is Koi Valley just the name of a store in Ontario?

 

[Joni Franciskovic]

That's so cool! I've never seen a blue opal watonai before! Just comets!

Is Koi Valley just the name of a store in Ontario?
[/QUO
Yes that is the name of the Koi and goldfish farm here in Ontario by port hope.

 

[KimA.]

Raingarden is sadly missed. He was always helpful.