Pigeon Pepper

[cubert]

Last week i got a pigeon snakeskin from kenny, very beautiful. Before it came i made sure my substrate was white so no peppering would occur. I have been intently observing the fish daily and I'm noticing very tiny black spots starting to appear on his upper body, and I'm confused as to why the peppering is happening. Here are some pics of my substrate/setup

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[DiscusDrew]

Ive written a number of posts, as have others, about this topic. Even in PERFECT conditions there are other factors to consider when looking for whether or not a pigeon will show peppering. Stress being a big one, a week is not a long time, in my opinion, knowing the quality of most of Kenny's stock, just give him some time to settle in and possibly to mature a little bit and the peppering will recede again. You have to realize peppering is the result of breeding out stress bars, so to an extent you need to look at it the same way, stress, water quality, background color, ground color, aggression, sickness, genetics etc etc can all play a factor. The tank looks fine, since I breed primarily pigeon based fish, I use white for EVERYTHING, three sides and the bottom of the tank are covered in white. This will help but even though most of my stock is very high quality, if you were to come into my fish room at ANY given point you will find pepper somewhere, its part of the fish. When they spawn, they pepper, when they fight over food, they pepper, when I do a tank change or re-pair a fish, they pepper. Its part of the game, good genetics however should mean that peppering occurs in very minimal amounts and generally under the chin if at all. HTH

[cubert]

Ok, I figured I might be getting too hasty. Thanks for all the info, I feel much better as im still new to this.

And yes he has a funny pepper patch under his chin, i love it

[DiscusDrew]

Sounds like a pigeon :) no worries

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Genetics