Question about hisser colors.

I have pretty large hisser colony. About 1000 or so. I started noticing a few months ago that maybe 1% of the total population has turned solid black. So far it looks to be only females. They were sold to me as regular hissers. I've had the colony about 2 years. I keep them at about 80 degrees in the winter, and about 85-90 in the summer. I feed chick mash, and fresh veggies and other scraps daily. Could it be diet related? Is there a problem with them turning black? Thanks for looking.

Ryan

rsharp87 said:

I have pretty large hisser colony. About 1000 or so. I started noticing a few months ago that maybe 1% of the total population has turned solid black. So far it looks to be only females. They were sold to me as regular hissers. I've had the colony about 2 years. I keep them at about 80 degrees in the winter, and about 85-90 in the summer. I feed chick mash, and fresh veggies and other scraps daily. Could it be diet related? Is there a problem with them turning black? Thanks for looking.Ryan

Click to expand...

Being black is not a problem, it is probably just an occurance of the recessive 'black morph' gene. Historically some people have isolated the all black ones to form a colony of G.portentosa 'black'. When you have a colony of black ones, then you will see 'normal' colored ones pop up from time to time that need to be removed.

Matt K said:

Being black is not a problem, it is probably just an occurance of the recessive 'black morph' gene. Historically some people have isolated the all black ones to form a colony of G.portentosa 'black'. When you have a colony of black ones, then you will see 'normal' colored ones pop up from time to time that need to be removed.

Click to expand...

Thanks! I have another setup ready. Maybe I could move them in by themselves. Hopefully I can find a male.

Is is just me, or is the black less common in males?

Ralph said:

Is is just me, or is the black less common in males?

Click to expand...

I have several thousand and recently I went through and separated out all the blacks. There were around 150-200. All sizes and both sexes. Put them in their own bin and left them alone. Now, about three months later, there is a mix of both colors in that bin. The babies are mixed and so are the adults. It seems as if some of the adults, molt into or out of the black phase. They all get the same diet, so I don't think its diet related. Interestingly, I've also found a bunch more blacks in the other bins.

Hey Kyle, how are yours doing?

I've got the ones you sent me isolated down to only the darkest, purest colored individuals. No babies yet but they should be on the way.