Adding to collection. Any advice on direction?

I am looking to add to my collection and was thinking about recessives. In particular axanthics, pieds and albinos. A small time local breeder told me that pieds are probably easiest to sell so i should get a male pied or a spider het pied and a bunch of female normals het pied. I was wondering what anyone's thoughts are on what is easier to sell and what their personal preferences are. I'm open to dom/codom morphs too lower end stuff ($600-700 max. range). Appreciate any discussion.

Too be honest albinos and pieds are still big and there is a demand on them if you have the right prices... So if I were you I would consider buying an albino het for spider and then getting a spider het for albino if that's the way it goes.. That will alow you to produce spider albinos... And for pieds you could consider het for pieds but then you're also going to be producing gets... And if you're not a trusted breeder or well known then its going to be hard to sell them... If I were you I would not consider hets only for that reason... You could pick pick up a few pied females het for pastel and get a male het for pastel sure its going to empty your pocket but its well worth it and better then feeding all these het pied mouths that you could not sell for 6 months... Just think about it... Hope I helped good luck on your choices.

".. So if I were you I would consider buying an albino het for spider and then getting a spider het for albino if that's the way it goes.. That will alow you to produce spider albinos... "

that is incorrect, spider is dominant, there are no het spiders :)


basically what the breeder said is correct. if a visible recessive is too expensive for you, you can get started by breeding a pair of Hets. But het to het only gives you a 25% chance to hit a visual, and you produce 66% possible hets which are not high in demand.

a good and cost-effective way is to get a visible male, and 2 or 3 female hets. Of course you can add other codominant genes easily, for example: male pied to female pinstripe het pied, and female pastel het pied.

you should prefer breedings that produce visible recessives or 100% hets. So pied to pied is of course nice, pied to 100% het pied gives you pieds and 100% het pieds, or pied to lets say a lemonblast to get 100% het pieds that also have pinstripe or pastel or lemonblast.


and about which one to choose.... it depends on which ones you prefer. There will always be a market for axanthics, albinos and pieds. If the prices come down, you will start to see more that have extra genes added, like black pastel spider albino, or enchi pinstripe pied, or axanthic clown. But these powerful base morphs will never go away. Sure, pieds are more expensive than albino, but if albino is more visually appealing to you, then thats what you should do.

When I started out I was pretty set on only working only with co-dom and dom traits. Its only now that I have just about all the morphs I could ever want to work with that I feel the need to get into some more recessive projects. As of now, I only have one recessive gene: Axanthic. My goal is to produce Axanthic Pieds (AKA Lightning Pieds) over the next 3-4 years. I think these double recessives are very cool and there aren't a whole lot of them because they are much more difficult to produce.

Go with the morph that you like the most, not the one that will make you the most money. The only two recessives that I truly love are Axanthic and Pied so it was only natural for me to go for the double recessive project. Even though I'm only halfway there, I am really looking forward to producing some lightning pieds!

Thanks for the input. I love both pieds and axanthics, especially when paired with spider or pastel to really bring out the silvers. I'm not a huge albino fan but the breeder i know told me he has a lot easier time selling "white snakes" than axanthics. Personally I agree with you that axanthics are much cooler than albinos. Either way thanks for the advice!!