What does "Peppering" mean?

[Wahter]

Pepper on Pigeon bloods has been discussed a few times here. Here's a thread with some photos.

http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showthread.php?t=66212

Bear in mind that many discus will darken up in a tank with a dark background and bottom substrate, however, with pigeons they end up showing pepper instead. This is all to blend in with their surroundings.

When the lights are out, the fish are asleep and even the usually darker non-pigeons will lighten up.




Walter

[nc0gnet0]

Interesting,

Had a good long look at that thread. I think people need to be carefull when they word things when talking about peppering and dark backgrounds. I still don't believe that dark backgrounds "cause" peppering, but, possibly they will bring it out. And dam, that was one dark tank!

[Wahter]

Even the non-pigeon blood discus in this tank are dark:

http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showthread.php?t=79286



Walter

[TankWatcher]

nc0gnet0, the gene resulting in the tendency to pepper has to be in the discus already. A dark tank won't cause a non pigeon to pepper.

But if the gene & the tendency is there, then the discus may attempt to blend in better with it's surroundings. It is the discus natural attempt to blend in with dark surroundings that either "causes" or "possibily brings out" the tendency to pepper.

As Walter demonstrated in his link above, non pigeon bloods will tend to darken their body so as to blend in better with a dark environment. But darkening is different to peppering (visually) even though the discus does it for the same purpose.

[Eddie]

nc0gnet0, the gene resulting in the tendency to pepper has to be in the discus already. A dark tank won't cause a non pigeon to pepper.

But if the gene & the tendency is there, then the discus may attempt to blend in better with it's surroundings. It is the discus natural attempt to blend in with dark surroundings that either "causes" or "possibily brings out" the tendency to pepper.

As Walter demonstrated in his link above, non pigeon bloods will tend to darken their body so as to blend in better with a dark environment. But darkening is different to peppering.

+1

[Jhhnn]

It seems to me that the mutation creating pigeon bloods has to do with the way colors are blended or grayed on the fish. with normal discus, the darker pigments and the lighter, brighter ones are blended together in a fine-grained sort of way, whereas it's coarser on PB's. So the bright colors are purer with Pigeons, as are the dark ones, which we see as peppering... It's like our perception of the color of mixed fine grained sand vs the color of mixed coarse pebbles...

I probably didn't say that very well...

[waters10]

Think like this. Amount of pepper a discus has, is related to genetics. The amount of pepper a discus will show, is related to his environment. A genetically clean PB might be very clean in a dark background, but it would be even cleaner in a light background. And honestly, PB's today are so clean (specially from our sponsors!), that I honestly don't see peppering nowadays as an issue at all! I'm sure I only think like that cause I owned a PB more than 10 years ago that had 5x more pepper than PB's today!

Also, like others mentioned, dark background makes other discus go darker. And I personally think that's a much bigger issue, since it affects the whole discus body, while clean PB will only show their bit of pepper on their faces and fins, while their main color remain the same.

[nc0gnet0]

It's not that I don't understand, it's that I have issue with how some people present it. When someone states that a dark background can cause peppering, thats not the case at all. Where as it may indeed bring it out and make it more noticeable, the peppering was always there to begin with. And once re-introduced into a lighter background will disapear. Possibly it could even be used as a tool to recognize the cleanest discus for breeding purposes.

I have a marlboro red throwback that has some peppering, I find it attrative on that particular fish. Although I must admit on other strains not so much. I have a slate grey bottom with your typical aquarium blue (plexi) background and can't say I have noticed any additional peppering on my fish. But then again, I don't know if a light grey actually qualifies as "dark". Then again, I am running different lighting then most on here I would imagine as I have the new marineland LED lighting system with the moonlights. I must say I am quite impressed with it as it really makes the discus's color "pop", much more so than the flourescent/actinics.

[waters10]

It's not that I don't understand, it's that I have issue with how some people present it. When someone states that a dark background can cause peppering, thats not the case at all. Where as it may indeed bring it out and make it more noticeable, the peppering was always there to begin with. And once re-introduced into a lighter background will disapear. Possibly it could even be used as a tool to recognize the cleanest discus for breeding purposes.

I have a marlboro red throwback that has some peppering, I find it attrative on that particular fish. Although I must admit on other strains not so much. I have a slate grey bottom with your typical aquarium blue (plexi) background and can't say I have noticed any additional peppering on my fish. But then again, I don't know if a light grey actually qualifies as "dark". Then again, I am running different lighting then most on here I would imagine as I have the new marineland LED lighting system with the moonlights. I must say I am quite impressed with it as it really makes the discus's color "pop", much more so than the flourescent/actinics.

Yeah, semantics, I guess. Dark background will cause the discus to show the peppering. If a discus does not have genetically a lot of peppering (and by a lot, depends on who you talk to), it won't make a huge difference.

I don't think light grey qualifies as dark background. I had a huge stump of Malaysian wood in my tank that would occupy over 5g of water. When I removed it, it made a HUGE difference on all my fish, specially on blue diamonds and penang eruption. But the difference on my PB based fish was slim.