Quote Originally Posted by Pterophyllum View Post
The more I work with this gene the more puzzled I become...

Batch #3 are disappointingly slow growing, I've recently moved about 15 mostly paraibas to a seperate tank to try and grow them out, but I'm struggling to find many classic "bsp's" in the batch. I know previously I said...


However it's worth noting that most of those were some of the larger ones I took to the shop, and the colour only really emerged when they got there, the ones at home by comparison still look very washed out.
Conversely...

Batch #4 these seem to be growing much faster and are rapidly catching, up with batch #3. In this batch there seem to be a reasonable proportion of youngsters with the classic "bsp" darker fins, but most of these have much darker bodies than I would have expected, this does however confirm that the male is at least het. for bg.

Finally batch #2
Some of these, seem to be expressing surprisingly strong body pigment, these are all fish with a smokey gene.

I have been pretty busy of late and haven't had chance to take many photos, hopefully I'll get chance in the next few days.

However, what is becoming increasingly clear is that the expression of this gene seems to be extremely variable and is probably dependent on both environmental factors such as diet, temperature, lighting and water chemistry as well as the interaction of other genes, in particular, if you want to produce "classic" looking "bsp's", make sure you keep smokey genes out of the gene pool!
..now that's interesting....you were referencing veils/bg up above...and I think that wifi is influenced by the dark/smokey genes....I have a bsg with wifi....a dark gene, but no smokey....