Lionhead

Identification

The lionhead is a hooded, dorsal-less goldfish, and the hood is the point. The name comes from the hood’s resemblance to a lion’s head. Wen care covers the tissue itself in full, including what to do when it reaches that stage. Its wen is typically among the largest of any breed, a dense, raspberry-textured growth that in mature fish covers the head, cheeks and gill covers and can close over the eyes, giving the mane the name describes. Beneath it is an egg-shaped body with no dorsal fin, a back that is fairly straight or gently curved rather than sharply arched, and a short, paired double tail set at a shallow angle with only a mild tuck at the base.

That profile is the reliable way to tell a lionhead from a ranchu, which has a shorter, deeper body, a continuously arched back and a tail base that turns down abruptly. The oranda is easier: it has a dorsal fin. Colours span orange, red, red-and-white, calico, chocolate, black, blue and white, and the wen keeps developing for a year or more, so a young fish gives only a hint of its adult head.

Oranda, lionhead or ranchu?

• 

  Oranda

  A dorsal fin

• 

  Lionhead

  No dorsal, a straighter back

• 

  Ranchu

  No dorsal, an arched back

Three hooded goldfish side by side: an oranda with a dorsal fin ringed on its back, a lionhead with its fairly straight, finless back ringed, and a ranchu with its arched, finless back ringed.

1. Oranda. The one of the three with a dorsal fin. Its hood can spread down the cheeks and over the gill covers.
2. Lionhead. No dorsal fin, and a back that runs fairly straight or gently curved, with only a mild tuck at the tail. Shops often sell it as a ranchu.
3. Ranchu. No dorsal fin, and one smooth arch from head to a tail tucked in at about 45 degrees.

Photographs: Oranda, Vassil, CC0; Lionhead, Lawrencekhoo, CC BY-SA 4.0; Ranchu, Lerdsuwa, CC BY-SA 4.0. Rings added.

The varieties, and the mislabelling

A lionhead is often sold under the wrong name.

• Chinese lionhead. The standard: flatter back, shallow tail set, and a large, loose hood.
• Lionchu. A ranchu cross selected for an arched back with a lionhead’s heavier hood. Used loosely, and many fish sold as one are simply a parent.
• Colour lines. Orange, red, red-and-white, calico, chocolate, black and blue. Black lionheads lighten with age for the reasons the black moor page sets out.

The mislabelling is with the ranchu, often in both directions. Check the back: a lionhead runs fairly straight with only a mild tuck at the tail base; a ranchu arches smoothly and drops steeply into a sharply angled tail. Both lack a dorsal fin, both carry a wen, and juveniles of the two are close to indistinguishable.

How it develops

The hood is the last thing to arrive and the biggest thing to arrive, which makes a young lionhead one of the less informative juveniles. The wen shows from about four months and keeps developing for a year or more, and no published source gives a finer timetable.

So you are buying a line, not a fish. Breeding goldfish covers why the parents tell you more than the juvenile does, and it matters more here than anywhere because the trait in question can eventually reach the eyes.

A hard fish to swim with

Worth stating plainly, because it explains every husbandry decision below.

Two things compound. No dorsal fin, so nothing resists roll and yaw: in the one study of dorsal-less goldfish they swam about as efficiently as finned ones but rolled and yawed more and accelerated poorly. And a heavy hood at the front, which may add weight and drag, though hooded fish have not been tested.

The result is normal for the breed: short deliberate bursts, frequent resting, and a fish that tires in a current a finned fancy might ignore.

What follows practically:

• Gentle flow, always. A sponge filter, a spray bar aimed at the glass, or a baffled outflow — goldfish filtration covers getting turnover without current.
• Shallow rather than deep. Depth is work. A wide, low tank suits it.
• Smooth, low decor and nothing with a gap, since a fish navigating by touch with a hood over its eyes will find it — aquarium decorations covers the test.
• A consistent feeding spot, used every time.
• Slow company only. A ryukin or a fantail will take every meal first, and chasing and bullying covers what that does over months.

Choosing one

1. The back, to confirm it is a lionhead at all.
2. Both eyes clear and not yet crowded by hood.
3. The wen developing evenly, not heavily to one side.
4. Swimming level, without visible struggle.
5. Read the shop, then quarantine for at least four weeks — this is a breed that takes transport and new water badly, so the quiet fortnight is doing real work.

Where you will find one. This is the edge of specialist territory. General shops do stock lionheads, but they are routinely mislabelled as ranchu and vice versa, so the back is the check that matters before anything else. A properly developed wen takes a year or more, so any lionhead you can buy cheaply will be a young fish with the hood barely started. For a specific quality of hood you are looking at a breeder, and the wait that comes with one.

Personality and behaviour

Lionheads are placid and unhurried, drifting along the bottom for most of the day. A fish whose wen has grown over its eyes navigates largely by smell and touch, which makes it slower still and prone to bumping into decor. They are peaceful company for other slow fancies and learn feeding spots quickly, but they cannot compete with fantails, ryukins or any single-tail, and in a mixed tank they go short until the loss of condition is obvious. A group of lionheads, or lionheads with ranchus and telescopes, is the arrangement that works.

Aquarium requirements

Around 100 litres (26 US gallons) for the first lionhead and 40 to 50 litres for each further slow fancy is a reasonable working range, and a wide, shallow footprint serves it better than a tall tank. Filter for five to ten turnovers an hour but tame the outflow with a spray bar, a sponge or a baffle, because a dorsal-less fish cannot hold position in a current; the filtration guide covers the options. Keep the temperature between 18 and 24 °C (64 and 75 °F) and stable.

Water quality is the whole game with a lionhead. Change 25 to 50 percent of the water weekly, guided by nitrate, following the water change guide. A bare bottom or fine sand makes uneaten food easy to see and remove, and decor should be smooth and sparse, since a fish that cannot see well collides with whatever is in front of it.

Feeding

A quality sinking pellet made for fancy goldfish is the base. Soak it for a minute, drop it in the same spot at every meal so a fish with limited vision can find it, and feed two or three small portions a day, each gone in a minute or two. Floating food encourages air-gulping, which is often blamed for a lionhead’s buoyancy trouble; the sinking versus floating guide explains why. Gel food and shelled peas add moisture and fibre; frozen daphnia makes a good weekly treat. Rich, high-protein feeding to force the wen is a breeder’s technique that depends on heavy water changes; in a home tank it mostly fouls the water.

Common health considerations

The wen leads the list. Reddened, fluffy or pitted patches on the hood are usually bacterial and often follow a lapse in water quality, so test and change water before anything else; small white pimples on the wen alone are often new growth, by keepers’ experience, and the white spots guide helps separate that from ich, which spreads to the body. A wen that grows over the eyes is not a disease, but a fish that cannot find food loses condition, which is where loss of appetite often starts in this breed.

Buoyancy problems, floating or tilting after meals, are common in any dorsal-less, round-bodied goldfish and often respond to sinking food, smaller portions and a few days of peas, though vets find other causes too. Lionheads also tire in current and rest on the bottom when flow is too strong; that is a husbandry problem, not an illness.

What goes wrong, in order

What you see	Usually	Where to look
Redness or fuzz in the wen folds	Water quality, then bacteria	Wen care
Resting low between bursts	Normal for the breed	Nothing, unless other signs
Resting low, clamped, breathing fast	Water, temperature, or flow	Sitting on the bottom
Floating or tipping after meals	Often diet, though other causes exist	Floating upside down
Hood crowding the eyes	The breed, taken far	Wen care
Losing condition quietly	Outcompeted at feeding	Chasing and bullying

Rows two and three are the same posture with different company. Telling them apart is the daily skill of keeping this breed, and the distinguishing signs are the fins, the breathing and whether the fish responds. Fast or laboured breathing covers counting a gill rate, which turns that judgement into a number.

Is a lionhead right for you?

It suits you if you have kept fancy goldfish before, you will run gentle flow and a shallow tank, you will feed in one place and check the fish is actually eating, and you find a slow animal restful rather than dull.

It does not suit you if it would share water with anything quicker, if the tank is deep with a strong filter, or if it is your first goldfish — goldfish for beginners is straight about where to start, and a fantail is the answer.

And the welfare question here is about the hood. A lionhead carries one of the largest hoods of any goldfish on a body with no dorsal fin, and in extreme lines that hood reaches the eyes and the gill covers. Goldfish welfare sets out the argument properly; the short version is that a moderate lionhead is a thriving animal and an extreme one is a fish whose selected features have begun to cost it function. Choosing the moderate fish is the keeper’s part of that.

History and origin

The lionhead came from China, from dorsal-less egg-fish stock, but its early history is poorly documented and sources disagree on dates. English sources place its arrival in Japan in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, Chinese accounts date the hooded form to the late nineteenth, and a review says only that dorsal-less mutants date from the Ming and Qing periods.

In Japan the Chinese lionhead is listed as a form of ranchu, and the ranchu was reshaped there for top viewing; the Japanese word shishigashira belongs to the dorsal-finned oranda instead. In China the lionhead continued along its own line, and Western shows judge both breeds mainly from the side. The Chinese lionhead remains the more heavily hooded of the two.