Baking lessons, how do you "mix" to get the giants you want

It's so frustruating that after many experiments, we still fall into the trap of ego. Producing large size long fin giant is quite a difficult challenge. Not only the length of the fish matters, its width is also important. Take the current line for instance, its length is good, but it lacks the width of a giant. Sure, it has faster growth compared to other spawns, longer finnage, good spread and ray branching, but they are not getting thicker body. It's like watching "skinny" giants, whereas we want to get the hulk bulky giants.

It seems it would be easy to improve on the bulkiness, by crossing them to a seemingly bulk giant. However, many of the bulk body giants are only half-giant. Their body length is usually about 3.5 inches in total including tail, the best shown so far only reaches 3.7". This is not so bad perhaps, with most of the offspring produced would be half-giant, and if we're lucky we can get one or two 75% giants ;)

Crossing with half-giant only goes so far. It is so much better to cross a giant HMPK with half-giant HM rather than the above suggested crossing. The reason being is because at least with the HMPK crossing, you'd be guaranteed half-giant and you can choose very good females for the male. Unlike HM female giants, choosing good HMPK giant female is a lot easier, with the effort needs to focus on body size and many of them are supplied with good rays branching. Long fin females fall into the area of unknown, either the whole line is not producing HM -- you'd be lucky to get SDs on all of your spawns, or the majority of the offspring are not even giants!

After long discussion with some breeders from the auction sites, it becomes apparent that most of their long fins are in fact produced by crossing with HMPK giants. Basically, none of the long fins are produced by crossing two long fins! They don't even bother to do it since they know the outcome is disappointing. Some of them who had tried, have managed to get long fin giants but sold all of the offspring as SD. That tells you something, isn't it....

Another trick that works very well is to pick giant HMPK female and crossing her with standard long fin male. Since you can get easily a very good long fin male, you can improve the finnage and body through this kind of crossing. And since the male is long fin, he'll "manage" to wrap that female somehow, at least he has better chance than a giant HMPK male due to his body length. Some of the breeders also mentioned that they do the crossing when the giant females are younger, when their bodies aren't so big. This is even getting easier. All they've done is choose very "old" standard HM male, large finnage, impressive colour etc, and cross with that young giant female. Presto, you've guaranteed to have successful spawning and at least half of the spawn would be half-giant. What better way to get easy gaints !!!

This doesn't interest us much though. We still want extremely large giants. Not just half-giants. The target at the moment is in producing 75% giants. Once this can be accomplished, we'll be aiming at that 100% giants ;)

Now you may ask, what's the size of a half-giant and 75% giants be? Half-giant HM typically has slightly bigger body than standard HM, with thick body or longer body/finnage. We categorize it as anything smaller than 4" would be half-giant. They are typically only 3.5 to 3.7 inches in total from tip to toe, head to end of tail. You may say, that's not really big is it, compared to 3" giant HMPKs. Well, what you need to take into consideration is that a 100% giant HMPK has to be 3" minimally, but usually they are 3.5". Hence the upgrade to a long fin is about right that 3.7" being considered half-giant HM. A 100% giant HMPK can reach about 4" as he gets older, perhaps 1+ year....

A 75% giant HM is usually having the size of 4 to 4.5". This is difficult to achieve, most long fin giants will just fall to half-giant categories. You need very dilligent water changing, flaring activity, etc to get him to this size!

You may ask what a 100% giant HM would look like.... Some breeders boast saying they have them, but do they really? A 100% giants should have length of 5.5 to 6.5" (or the infamous 7" giants!!). The largest long fin giant females we've got was a 4+ inches. That was massive enough. Such a large giant would deem to be SD and drag its tail everywhere! Hence we don't think anyone managed to get a good 100% HM giants. If they have them, they look so disappointingly like SD that the breeders won't be sharing them to anyone as yet ;)

What you need to remember as well is that crossing 2 giants won't get you any guarantee of similar quality giants. Hence, suppose you get a pair of 100% giants, there won't be any chance in world that the offspring would be 100% giants! This is because the gene is very much instable. You may get a bunch of half-giants, and soon enough you'll lose the line in despair, unless you cross out with new blood.

As long fin giant is very much new in the market, you also find that your pool of choices reduced significantly. It is very difficult to search for good pairings for long fin giants. Most people will just ended up crossing their long fin with short fin giants. This is unlike the standard HM lines, where you can shop for the best male and female fairly easily and their price has gone down considerably. Shopping for long fin giants is painful with the outcome of pairing is a bit dimmer than your typical bettas. Hence, if you're up to the challenge, long fin giants would be giving you the best torture to your patience :) Only advisable to those who have strong will and never given up, otherwise you better stick with your typical bettas or short fin HMPK giants, no offence intended...

Also, you may notice that many short fin giants sold at 3" have "slightly" longer anal/caudal fins? That's because they are crossed to HM giants (either half-giant or the 75%). This is considered cheating in our dictionary, since it is difficult to say whether the HMPK is considered 75% giant or 100% giant HMPK. Many people just put a blind eye and call them giants, that'll do :)

Crossing to long fin to improve finnage is no secret. Try to cross your short fin HMPK to long fin HM, you'll get 50% short fin and 50% long fin. The "short" fin offspring would have a tad longer on anal and caudal, and the "long" fin offspring would be slightly tad shorter on the finnage than their parent was!

What would a half-giant and 75% giant HMPK look like? A half-giant HMPK, again, won't be much bigger than your typical HMPK. Their size is usually 1.5 times bigger, but that's about it. You may see them as 2.3". Crossing a standard HMPK to a giant HMPK, either 75%, 100%, or even a half-giant HMPK, will get you a half-giant, it's that simple! A 75% giant HMPK is somewhere about 2.5". We simply put anything  below 2.8" to be 75% giant HMPKs. So you can see many others try to "improve" the length of their HMPK by crossing to HMs, the finnage will be longer hence helps in getting that final inch.

So, if you're interested on getting any giants in your spawns, all you have to do is cross your line with a giant ;) It's only getting tougher when you try to produce a good quality giants, that's when you need to do good planning and having good eyes to spot nice pairings :)

Funny how all of this is no difference than the baking lessons. You need to get the good hands on a range of things in order to get that perfect cake. You overdo it, the outcome isn't as expected. Lacking an ingredient won't get you there either. What if you've got all the ingredients only to find out you don't have the necessity equipment (hey the oven is broken for weeks!). Patience is virtue, just don't give up!