Ok, here goes my first thread about my new Golden Sunshines.

As most of you know, I have 2 normally colored and marked Golden Sunshines. It looks like one is male and the other, the runt, is my possible female.

There's also one who has a lot of orange markings and is definitely a female.

And then there's "the other". I named him Rosy back when I thought he was a female. Turns out he's a he, and that he chose a mate right from the first week in the tank. He and the runty GS have been living together in one corner of the tank all along. He defends her from bullying and tries to fend off the others during feedings, but the runt still rarely gets enough to eat.

For other background - They were all 4" when I got them on June 15th. There was also a pretty Carnation in the box who was 5".
The Carnation is now over 6" and as of yesterday, 3 of the GS are a bit over 6" too. The runty female GS is only 5" and a petite 5" at that.

The female Carnation and orange marked GS have been taking turns laying eggs for several weeks now on the left end of the tank on the mag-float. I ignore the eggs since they aren't ready for breeding yet.

My Breeding IDEA:

I LOVE the pink blush tones of my oddball GS and would like to see if I can enhance them and reduce face markings through breeding. I've considered all sorts of strains that might accomplish this, but decided instead to start out with the pink blush and the runty female GS to see if I can get a couple of fry who are pinker in tone. If I can do that, I'll line breed in the hopes of someday producing a strain of this stunning pink color.

To test my theory that the runt is a female and that they truly are a pair, I placed a cone in the tank 2 days ago. As of last night at the 24 hour mark they were carefully tending a batch of about 60 eggs with only a handful of white eggs visible on the cone. I got the dickens from them when I tried to do a water change! LOL

I snapped a couple of pics of them last night tending the eggs, but kept the lighting low and didn't use flash so as not to upset them. I know the eggs won't make it, and that's fine, I just want to make sure that all is well with the couple and that the male is fertile. They still have a lot of growing to do before I can seriously breed them.

Here are the pics:

8-28-2011.jpg

Tending the eggs... Pink Blush male in the back and runty female GS in the foreground

8-28-2012-2.jpg

A pic to show just how segregated my tank is at the moment. Neither group crosses the middle line. LOL

8-28-2012-3.jpg

And here's a pic, with flash, of the 3 on the left end of the tank. The Carnation and the orange marked GS above her are both females. All of them are just a bit over 6" now and nearly ready to go into my big display tank.

I'll keep updating this thread as the pink blush pair grows out some more and I start breeding them for real.