Celestial Eye

Identification

A celestial eye looks up. Its eyes protrude from the head like a telescope’s, but the pupils are fixed pointing straight at the sky; it is not a posture, because the eyes cannot turn. Fry hatch with normal eyes, which begin to project in the first few months and then rotate upward as the fish matures, in most fish; the timing varies between lines.

Behind the eyes the back is smooth and finless, arching from head to tail, and the tail is double and usually short. Colours are mostly orange and red, with red-and-white, calico, white and black fish also bred.

The breed shares its finless back and upward gaze with the bubble eye, which is distinguished by the fluid sacs under its eyes.

Telescope, celestial or bubble eye?

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  Telescope

  Eyes pushed out to the sides

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  Celestial Eye

  Eyes turned to the sky

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  Bubble Eye

  A sac beneath each eye

Three eye breeds side by side: a telescope with an eye projecting from the side of its head ringed, a celestial seen from above with an upturned eye ringed, and a bubble eye with the fluid sac beneath its eye ringed.

1. Telescope. Eyes that project outward from the sides of the head. The black moor is the black form of the telescope (the British show standard judges it as a separate type).
2. Celestial Eye. No dorsal fin in the standard, and eyes turned upward to gaze at the surface, with no sac beneath them.
3. Bubble Eye. No dorsal fin in the standard, upturned eyes, and a fluid-filled sac beneath each one that trembles with every movement.

Photographs: Telescope, Fanghong, CC BY 2.5; Celestial Eye, Michelle Jo, CC BY 3.0; Bubble Eye, Lerdsuwa, CC BY-SA 4.0. Rings added.

What a celestial actually sees

The fact that everything else on this page follows from, and it is more specific than “poor eyesight”.

The pupils point permanently upward. This is not a telescope’s problem of poor focus — the telescope page covers that one — but a different thing: the visual field is aimed at the surface and above it.

So the fish sees little forward or down, which is where food is, where obstacles are, and where other fish approach from.

And it can see you, at least in outline, whenever you lean over the tank. Some keepers report celestials responding readily to a person above the water, which would be less a personality trait than a consequence of where the eyes are aimed.

It locates food by smell and by feel, running along the substrate with its mouth. Goldfish anatomy and biology covers the lateral line and the sense of smell that make this workable, and it is workable — a well-kept celestial feeds perfectly well. It simply does it differently, and slowly.

Substrate matters more here than for any other breed

A specific and under-stated consequence of that upward gaze.

A fish that feeds by mouthing along the bottom will take in whatever is there. Coarse gravel is a swallowing and choking hazard for any goldfish and a considerably larger one for this breed, because the fish is not looking at what it picks up.

Sand or bare glass, therefore, without exception — substrate for goldfish covers grain size and why the middle sizes are the dangerous ones.

And food that stays put. Sinking pellets in a consistent spot, not scattered, so the fish can find the same place every time — sinking versus floating food covers why surface feeding is doubly wrong here.

How it develops

Fry hatch with ordinary eyes, flat to the head. The eyes protrude within the first two months and usually turn upward over the next few, in most fish by about nine months, and a few take longer or never turn fully.

So a juvenile celestial looks like a dorsal-less telescope for a while, and the upward turn is the last thing to happen. Asymmetry that is present early may stay.

The timing is the thing to know before you buy. A celestial eye does not hatch with its eyes upturned. Fry look like any other dorsal-less fancy, and the rotation happens gradually over the first months. A juvenile whose eyes are still part-way round is normal and will usually continue; a mature fish whose eyes have stopped short may stay as it is, and neither is a defect so much as a stage.

This matters at the shop. Celestials are commonly sold young, at the point where the eyes are turning but the final position is not yet fixed, and no one can tell you exactly where a given fish will end up. If you want a particular look, buy an older fish and pay for it. If you buy a juvenile, buy it for the breed rather than for the individual, and expect the face you get in a year to be somewhat different from the one in the bag.

The varieties

Few, and the differences are mostly in colour. That is worth understanding before you go looking: in most fancy breeds the varieties are finnage — a ryukin comes short-tailed or long-tailed, an oranda veiled or not. The celestial eye has no such range, because the two features that define it, the missing dorsal and the upturned eyes, are fixed. What is left to vary is colour.

• Colour lines: orange, red, red-and-white, calico, white and black.

Orange and red-and-white are what you will actually find. Calico celestials exist and are genuinely uncommon rather than merely expensive, and black ones often do not stay black — as with the black moor, a line that was never fixed for black loses it, and a black celestial bought at three months may be bronze by two years. Buy the fish in front of you, not the one on the tank label.

The standard celestial has no dorsal fin. Upward-eyed fish with a dorsal fin exist in China, where a 1904 text lists both kinds, but they are rare and do not meet the standard; a dorsal fin, or even a ridge of one, on a fish sold as a celestial usually means a cross, most often with a telescope.

Choosing one

1. Two eyes protruding evenly and aimed the same way. Asymmetry is permanent.
2. Clear corneas, no scrapes on the protruding tissue.
3. Level swimming, deliberate rather than struggling.
4. Watch it feed. This is the test that matters most for this breed.
5. Look at the substrate it is standing on, since a celestial on coarse gravel has been picking things up blind.
6. Read the shop, then quarantine for at least four weeks.

Where you will find one. A scarce fancy — most general shops have never stocked one, and a specialist will often order rather than hold them. That usually means waiting and paying more, and it makes the usual advice about inspecting before buying harder to follow, so it is worth being firm about it anyway: ask for photographs of the actual fish, from above as well as side on, since the view from above is the one this breed is judged by and the one a listing rarely shows.

Personality and behaviour

Celestial eyes are quiet, slow and inoffensive, and they experience the aquarium in a way no other goldfish does. They see the surface, the lights and anything passing overhead, but nothing of the substrate in front of them, so they feed by smell and by rooting along the bottom.

They are the wrong fish for a busy community. Anything with a dorsal fin is faster; anything with forward-facing eyes finds food first. Other celestials, bubble eyes and, with care, ranchus or lionheads are the sensible company, and the compatibility checker will confirm what does not belong.

Aquarium requirements

Start from 100 litres (26 US gallons) for the first fish and 40 to 50 litres for each additional one, in a long, shallow tank rather than a tall one. The interior must be smooth, with nothing that can scratch a projecting eye, and sparse: rounded stones, a piece of smooth wood and soft live plants are enough.

Substrate is the important decision. A fish that feeds by feel along a bottom it cannot see will take in whatever is there, so sand or a bare bottom is the answer, as the substrate guide explains.

Filtration must be effective but calm. Cover every intake with a sponge and keep the outflow soft, since a fish without a dorsal fin rolls easily in current and tires quickly; the filtration guide covers suitable options. Many guides give 18 to 24 °C (64 to 75 °F) and some breed societies 15 to 20 °C; keep it stable, and change 25 to 40 percent weekly according to nitrate readings.

Feeding

Sinking food, always, and always in the same place. A celestial cannot watch a pellet fall past its face, but it can smell it and will head for a corner where food reliably arrives. Base the diet on a quality sinking pellet for fancy goldfish, add gel food that stays where it is put, and offer blanched peas, spinach and zucchini for roughage; the sinking food guide sets out the reasoning.

Because the eyes point upward, celestials will feed at the surface when food floats there, and the air they gulp doing so is often blamed for floating episodes. Feed small amounts two or three times a day and watch that the fish is actually eating; a celestial can go hungry in a full tank unnoticed.

Common health considerations

The eyes come first. A scratch from decor, gravel or a net can cloud the cornea and, if the water is dirty, become infected; the cloudy eyes guide covers what to watch for. Since the eyes point upward, injury from above, such as a rough net, is a particular risk, so move the fish in a container.

Hunger is the quiet problem. A celestial in a shared tank can eat too little for weeks before it looks thin, and a fish that is losing weight, sitting on the bottom or ignoring food should have its water tested and be checked against the loss of appetite guide. Buoyancy upsets from gulped air and overfeeding are as common as in any fancy and often resolve with sinking food and a day’s fast, though vets find other causes too; a celestial that cannot right itself for more than a day needs attention.

What goes wrong, in order

What you see	Usually	Where to look
Not finding food	The breed, plus company that is too quick	Chasing and bullying
A cloudy or scraped eye	Decor, an intake, or gravel	Cloudy eyes
Mouthing at gravel, then distress	Something swallowed	Substrate
Gradually thinner, no visible cause	Losing every meal, over months	Loss of appetite
Struggling against the flow	The filter, not the fish	Goldfish filtration
Floating or tipping after meals	Often diet, though other causes exist	Floating upside down

Rows one and four are the same failure at two timescales, and it is the one that actually kills celestials: not a disease, but a fish that quietly receives less food than it needs for long enough to matter. The fix is stocking and feeding technique rather than anything from a bottle.

Is a celestial eye right for you?

It suits you if you have kept demanding fancies before, you will run sand or bare glass, feed sinking food in one place and watch that it gets eaten, and you will keep it with fish as slow as itself or on its own.

It does not suit you if you want a mixed community, if you like a gravel substrate, or if this is an early goldfish. Like the bubble eye it is a fish for someone who will design a tank around it.

And it carries two selected traits at once — the upward eyes and the missing dorsal fin — which is the combination goldfish welfare asks the hardest questions about. Kept as this page describes it lives well; kept as an ordinary goldfish it does not, and it is the keeper rather than the fish who decides which.

History and origin

The celestial is an old breed. The earliest known depiction of an upward-eyed goldfish is a Chinese scroll of 1772, although some sources date the breed to about 1870, and some accounts credit Korea with developing the type. Some authors treat the celestial as a mutation of the telescope, but genetic work suggests the two arose separately, and breeders fixed the trait by selection.

The fish reached Japan in the early twentieth century and became the choten gan, roughly “eyes toward the heavens”. Today celestials remain a specialist’s fish, prized as much for their calm as for their upward stare.