Black fish

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Morning

I'm no geneticist, so I would be grateful for help. I have a small garden pond, and the fish are standard goldfish and shabunkins, the latter I chose for colour. The offspring from last year have grown up, and half of them are pure black! The remainder, I suspect are half goldfish/half shabunk, and only one looks like the original colourful fish. The black fish are a boring surprise, and of course virtually invisible, even at night with a torch. Is this a common experience?
 

JohnHuff

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All my black babies have changed to bright colors by the first year. The black color is to protect them from predators. Yours will change colors too.
 

Mmathis

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Welcome!

Yes, unfortunately, the black color won't stay in a normal gold fish. Sad, 'cause they are neat! Shubunkins are just a breed of gold fish. If you ever see light-colored, almost transparent babies with black eyes, you can be pretty sure you've got some Shubie babies! Their colors will develop over the first few months.
 
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In our pond some of our babies turned orange, but we have a number of them that are still black a year later. Not sure if they have plans to change or not? I guess time will tell! The amazing thing is how FAST they change color - within a day or two they go from all black to some orange spots to all orange. Pretty cool! We also had some that were born orange - maybe mama liked them less and didn't care so much if they got eaten? ;)
 
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In my parents pond they have had many black goldfish change to orange, but not all. Several of these black fish are now three plus years old with no signs of every changing....just my experience.
 

j.w

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docbike
I had a black goldfish that remained that way for 5yrs at least and this year he just started to turn orange. Thought for sure he never would. He is a good 6" or more in size.
 
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My hybrids ( koi/ shubunkin / comets) always remained a drab olive color....but had beautiful flowing fins:)
 

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