About Albinism in fish

[Lennie]

Today, I saw someone shared a video of his "Marble chocolate sailfin mollies". The fish in the video have red eyes. Yet, they have an obvious coloration going on, rather than the "classic albino" look. Now that I'm thinking, many times, we see so many albino fish with different coloration going on. 

 

How does this albinism but colored fish look work? I'm confused. @Odd Duck @Biotope Biologist @Colu Do you guys have an opinion?

Quote

Perhaps the most unusual of all Molly breeding forms is Chocolate. This is because it is a dark-colored albino! At first, this sounds like an absolute contradiction in terms, like a “round corner” or the “black mold”. But it’s still true. In the chocolate molly, the red eyes of the albino meet a chocolate-colored body. The body color can vary greatly from strain to strain: from dark chocolate (i.e. very dark) to light nougat (i.e. almost merging into orange-beige), everything is possible and there are also gradations within a strain.

https://www.aquariumglaser.de/en/fisharchive/poecilia-chocolate-2/

 

Some other pictures online:

How come an albino look "dark" enough to be named chocolate?

 

 

Or, how come "albino koi swordtails" look very much like normal kois, other than the eye color, while albino cories, bristlenose plecos or  bichirs are directly white?

 

Is there a specific situation for the orangeish/red coloration in albinos? Because, yesterday, when I was at my LFS, They had albino paradise fish, and the only color it has other than white was orange. Or an albino oscar keeps the orangish body marks. Orange strains are very common among albino livebearers too. But guppies, for example, have so many colorations going on, even as albino lines. Like the one @Guppysnail got lately. MY albino platinums look like exactly what you expect, but albino silverados are again orange.

 

[Lennie]

The video I saw today was this:

(kinda loud music in the background, warning, keep the volume dow)

 

Edited April 3 by Lennie

[Guppysnail]

I don’t know but I’m curious. I have started working with the albino yellow metal lace guppies and wondered the same thing. 

[Biotope Biologist]

Well genetics have got quite interesting and fish have quite a few pigments. I am sure somewhere down the line someone figured out that you can keep the albinism gene and artificially select for all pigments to be missing except melanin

 

As is the case for these chocolate albinos. Something interesting of note I have seen in native rockfishes that could perhaps pertain to this yellow albino molly is that I have noticed very rarely rockfish will have random streaks of yellow even in rockfish species that do not appear to have any yellow. It appears to be some sort of gene defect in the red pigmentation that makes it highlighter yellow. I wish I could share pics of some specimens ive seen it is truly wild. It looks as if someone has been grabbing random rockfish out of the wild and splattering them with yellow fluorescent paint.

 

I just want to make a note:

I don’t know very much about genes and gene manipulation. I just see things in the wild and say “oh that’s pretty neat! The fish lab guys aren’t gonna believe this” and thats about the extent of it

Edited April 3 by Biotope Biologist

[Colu]

On 4/3/2024 at 6:15 PM, Lennie said:

The video I saw today was this:

(kinda loud music in the background, warning, keep the volume dow)

 

 albinism is caused by autosomal recessive gene that causes pigmentation changes and is extremely rare in wild fish as to your  question hopefully some more knowledgeable will have the answer genetic isn't something that I have researched 

[face]

There’s all kinds of albino ish things out there I can’t remember them all but leucism for example is albino but with dark eyes as for the orange in Oscars it’s a structural colour meaning not pigment so you can have albino but with the orange lots of fish have this thought 

this is what structural colour looks like under a microscope 

a hair for comparison of size some fish can change the shape of these to change the colour neon tetra for example  this is a neon flexing muscles to change its colour by changing the relationship between light and the structure 

[Odd Duck]

Albinism is specifically lack of melanin, which is why leucistic is sometimes considered a form of albinism despite sometimes still having other pigments present.  Leucism is also defined somewhat differently in different species of animals.  Generally it’s defined as reduced pigments (including melanin, yellow, orange, etc) but leucistic animals usually still have a dark eye.  Lucy snakes species are usually all white with dark eyes.  Axolotls the same - white with dark eyes.  Leopard geckos usually still have a bit or a lot of yellow.  Leucistic cockatiels (usually called lutinos) also have both yellow and orange still present and usually (nearly always) have dark eyes.  Many lucies will develop pigment spots as they get older and they can be born with pigment spots.  “Dirty” and “calico” super red bristlenose plecos and blue-eyed lemons whether they have spots or not, are all likely some form of leucism.  Snow white plecos are also probably lucies since they are white with dark eyes.

I’m definitely not an expert but it’s been an interest of mine and I’ve occasionally taken a dip in that genetic knowledge pool over the years.  😝  I don’t think the chocolates qualify as albino even with lack of melanin in the eyes.  It may be an unusual manifestation of albinism but I don’t think the fish would qualify as a true albino with that much melanin in the skin.  It might fit into a long stretch of the leucistic definition but I’m not sure.

I’m not sure how much that clears anything up or if it confuses things further.  I have not watched the linked video to see what they say.  All this is just definitions to start, then my personal experience on what people generally call lucies.

[Odd Duck]

On 4/3/2024 at 8:03 PM, face said:

There’s all kinds of albino ish things out there I can’t remember them all but leucism for example is albino but with dark eyes as for the orange in Oscars it’s a structural colour meaning not pigment so you can have albino but with the orange lots of fish have this thought 

this is what structural colour looks like under a microscope 

a hair for comparison of size some fish can change the shape of these to change the colour neon tetra for example  this is a neon flexing muscles to change its colour by changing the relationship between light and the structure 

I could be wrong, but I believe orange is usually a pigment, not a structural color.  It can be seen differently depending on muscle control of chromatophores, but it’s usually an actual pigment.

Blue is nearly always a structural color with how the light reflects off microscopic structures in the skin or on the surface like on a blue butterflies wings or bird wings.  Google tells me less than 1% of animals have blue pigment but there is one species of butterfly that produces a blue pigment - the obrina olivewing butterfly (who knew), and the blue poison dart frog also produces blue pigment.  I’m sure if I dig deep enough into google there I could fine more, but it’s exceedingly rare.  That is why we need some light on the animal to see the blue clearly and why blue is sometime metallic looking in some animals.

More nerdy info that will bore most people.  🤷🏻‍♀️