Photo: New Camera so FINALLY proper piccies of my babies & do I have a melanoid???

[zoezakella]

OK so am silly excited here :grin: am thinking I have spotted a few melanoids in my batch (please please oh pretty please) I have attached some piccies in the first 3 pics am I right, is it the ones with rings on their eyes and in particular the 1st piccy which is grey with speckles and rings around it eyes????

Is so lovely having my screen back on a camera (after Ella broke mine months ago) but I have so missed digital macro and am still kicking myself over losing out on so many egg piccies

Anyway here they are....

 

[Maythe27th]

I'm no expert, but I'd say that you have a few melanoid axolotls, or they may be wild-type. Or maybe they could grow out of that coloring and be leucistic. I'm not sure.

 

[Kaysie]

Looks like they could be melanoid. Especially in that second picture: the one on top looks melanoid.

 

[zoezakella]

Looks like they could be melanoid. Especially in that second picture: the one on top looks melanoid.

Thanks Kaysie am sooooooooooo pleased So is it the shiny ring around the eyes that indicates a melanoid as I have a few with that? Tried shining a light on them but too small to tell

Any other things to look out for??

Thanks again

 

[NachoMom]

I love the coloring present in the first two pics - beautiful little guys (or gals) you have zoe!

 

[zoezakella]

I love the coloring present in the first two pics - beautiful little guys (or gals) you have zoe!

Why thank you roud:

 

[michael]

Can you really tell the phenotype when they are that little?

 

[zoezakella]

Can you really tell the phenotype when they are that little?

LOL Michael your the expert this is my 1st batch so am learning as I go along :happy: Already have an adult golden albino, wild and leucistic, just wanted a melanoid and albino leucistic to make up my axie family (I like to dream) :lol:

 

[michael]

I can't tell much about them when they are that little. Maybe others can. I still have trouble with some of the variants of melanoid as older axolotls telling who is melanoid and who isn't. If it's grey or black with no iridophores it's obvious to me it is melanoid. When they don't have iridophores and have a pattern similar to wild type they confuse me.

 

[zoezakella]

I can't tell much about them when they are that little. Maybe others can. I still have trouble with some of the variants of melanoid as older axolotls telling who is melanoid and who isn't. If it's grey or black with no iridophores it's obvious to me it is melanoid. When they don't have iridophores and have a pattern similar to wild type they confuse me.

Thanks for that Michael, I must admit to being full stop over this egg raising malarky :happy:

I am hoping for a melanoid but sure even if there is not I will still have some gorgeous axies and the fact they are my 1st batch makes them all that extra bit special

Full respect to you breeders dont know how you do it! Mind you if it wasn't for my axies, juvie newts, axie babies, fish, dog, husband, kids and 3 jobs maybe I wouldn't be as stressed as I have been with it, not enough hours in the day :wacko:

 

[Skilly]

I would say if you have any that don't have shiny rings around their eyes it is a mel.

It is hard to tell when they are that small.... I know because I have been trying to figure mine out. Look for really dark eyes... no shiny bits. Flashlights work well.. I used that on my babies hehe and now I know I have a few mels :rofl:

 

[MereB]

albino leucistic

Pretty sure that's a genetic impossibility since it's the leucistics ability to produce melanin along only their backs that makes them leucistic. Albinos by definition can't produce the dark pigment. You can if you are very very lucky however find the occasional white albino. They look the most like the leucistics. Have pink eyes (although at this age they would probably be white), pink gills and have shiny pigmet but NO dark spots or yellow spots. You look to have some melanoid albinos in there that I can see. They, at this age, look to have no eyes at all and tiny yellow patches on their heads. The beautiful black Melanoids will have solid black eyes with NO shiny rings and be a shade of grey it's the absence of irradiphores (shiny pigment) that makes them melanoid. You could have a few leucistic babies there who have the shiny rings but it's hard to know without a side view to see whether the black spots are confined to the top of them (leucistic) or if the migrate down their bodies at all.

Michaels right though it is very hard to define their colours at this age and they can change change quite a bit between now and when their colours are set. Unfortunately we will all just have to wait to see what all these now little ones become.

 

[caseeybrown]

When i had axie babies i stuck a magnifying glass over my camera and then the camera light made the wildtypes yellow eye rings shine

 

[Kaysie]

Mere, I hate to rain on your parade, but yes, you can have a leucistic albino. Here's how it works: The animal will be albino (red eyes). The leucistic gene, which prevents the migration of color cells off the neural crest, will be expressed as small yellow patches along the back. The animal will have no 'freckles' because it's albino (and unable to make melanin), but it can still express xanthophores, but these will not migrate off the neural crest.

So where a 'normal' leucistic has brown freckles along its face and back, a leucistic albino will have yellow freckles.

And in this case, leucistic albino is the correct terminology. The animal is albino, and leucistic is an adjective describing what kind of albino (like melanoid albino, axanthic albino, etc.).