question about if morph or normal albino

Originally Posted by jlassiter

Looks to be more of a Newport Phase Amel with the pattern on the laterals.......

Cal kings are from brown to black with white to yellow bands.......
The term Amel means Amelanistic = no melanin (black).
So the yellow will still be apparent and the black will be missing and replaced with no pigment......white.......

No green at all on Calkings......

Yeah, that's spot-on John. I'm sure he simply means a greenish opaque hue to it, and not really a definative solid GREEN coloration from pigment cells. I know you have seen this look many times too. Likely from carotenoid retention retained within the skin cells as they mature.

Also, since the animal is an amel, and the tail has a continuous stripe down the length of the tail, right off the bat there is no question that it has both Newport-Long Beach AND San Diego striped lineage to it's origin. Hubbs states that there has never been a known "pure" Newporter albino ever found in the wild. But as we both know there are indeed many countless amel San Diego striped morphs in the hobby. These two line-bred composites are also what originated the "banana" Cal. kings decades ago.

To the OP,.....you must always expect to pay a few extra bucks from a pet store, as they have to allow for overhead of the store with some profit as well. Now if you are happy with it, and since you didn't have to pay for shipping or gas to drive to a show that was many miles away, you did fine if you look at it realistically.


~Doug

OOPS!!,........nevermind my comment on the green hue. Right after I posted it, I see he was talking about the normal YELLOW pigment after looking at a photo of it, and not the amel equation which is very pink at that age anyway..LOL!.............D'OH!!


~Doug