Peppering Gone After PP Treatment. Thoughts?

[Holynehpets]

I have a grow out tank with about 150 fry from three different batches. I noticed some of my fish from my Blue Diamond x Red Melon cross had quite a bit of peppering and thought that might have just been a byproduct of the two fish breeding. I was having some problems with illness in the tank so decided to treat with potassium permanganate yesterday. After treating, my wife noticed that all of the peppering was gone from the fish and they just look like regular melons now. All of our water parameters are well within normal ranges and filtration and everything is running fine. There has been some rubbing up on things but that has decreased significantly with the PP treatment. Almost all fish are actively looking for food and eating.

Any thoughts on what this could have been?

[Willie]

Crossing a melon to a blue diamond typically produces muddy colored discus with some, but not a lot of, peppering. I'd think that the reduction in peppering is due to the large water change(s) involved in PP treatments.

Have fun raising the young, Willie

[CliffsDiscus]

Sound like a chemical peel, some of the scales peeled off, check the tank floor for missing scales. The black scales will grow back.

Cliff

[LizStreithorst]

I think it's called burning off the pepper. They do it with PB's so they look pepper free in the pictures. It always comes back because it's pigment.

[peewee1]

Pepper pealing cannot be a good thing. For several reasons.

[CliffsDiscus]

I think it's called burning off the pepper. They do it with PB's so they look pepper free in the pictures. It always comes back because it's pigment.

Liz,
Your right common practice sellers do to sell
cleaner Pigeon. I remember one hobbyist bought some clean Pigeons only to fine he got a bag
of black scales too.

Cliff

[LizStreithorst]

Dang!

[Johnny95132]

I never heard of this "scale burning" practice up until this date. But if the chemicals are strong enough to burn off the scales, wouldn't they be toxic to the other parts of the fish, like the eyes? I'm sure that any substance strong enough to remove scales would also burn off other organs of the fish. By the way, such treatments seem to border on animal cruelty. I'm in no way a animal right's/ PETA advocate but the practice of dumping caustic chemicals sounds very stressful to the fish.

[Holynehpets]

Interesting, I had never heard of this practice before now either. Thanks for the info Cliff and Liz! We don't plan on doing another bath anytime soon, but if we have to, we'll be sure to check for the scales.

We used 1 ml of PP solution for every 10 litres of water in the tank and our tank is right around 340 litres (or 90 gals). Additonally, we only left it for two hours before neutralizing and removing it with a large water change. This ratio must have been just right to have this happen.

[Oxboy]

IMO the safest and least invasive way to remove peppering is Photoshop.