Thursday, February 18, 2010

Grade Your Flowerhorn

This is how breeders grade their ZZ flowerhorn (AAA,AA,A,B or C) while they are still at fry size. This process must be use or observe to make or select the best fry and comes out the best among the rest flowerhorn. You know why? First of all when a flowerhorn lay an egg they comes in a thousand, if you got lucky, this eggs will be 90% fry. So having this thousand fry and will be free swimming fry there will be a time that you do not have time to take good care and them they will not develop to there potentials and competitive fish. So usually most breeders will cull and partition their breed at the size of 1" to 1.5". Since they are such a young & small size, not much thing could be seen out of them except of their flowerline.

Firstly let us understand what does ZZ mean. ZZ means zenzu (mandarin) it equals to pearls. So what is a ZZ pearls? As you can see the earliest of ZZ do not have any pearls dots on their body so how did they come about the name pearls? For your information, the pearls on the ZZ means the each dark flowerline found on the ZZ body which was surrounded by some metalic hue & glow which resemble a black pearl shine. You may want to get back to your ZZ flowerhorn now to know what I am saying.

Ok, so it is the flowerline that determine the grade of a ZZ. This will be a great grading system of a flowerhorn fish.

Grade A - flowerline should be more than 75% to 100%. Perfect!
Grade B - flowerline should be more than 50% to 75%. Good!
Grade C - flowerline which are less than 50% or only a few dots. Average!

From Grade A, we could gradually know if the ZZ is going to be a AA or AAA later by determining the growth traits of the fish with the written explanation.

1. Kok (Head) - the bigger the better.
2. Colors(Body Color) - the more solid & colorful the better.
3. Body ( Shape of the Body)- the stout & thicker the better.
4. Finnage & Tail - Balance & proportion.
5. Flowerline (plums) - the darker & more shiny pearls surround it the better.

Hope this will help you grading your Zenzu, selection and enjoyment of this wonderful fish!! It's a beautiful thing to know the quality of your Flowerhorn.

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