Breeding: How to Differ Matt and Calico?

by Miriam
(Germany, Munich)

I have a question that has been bothering me for quite a while now:
What is the difference between a matt (Sakura) and a nacreous (Calico) fish?
I know that a nacreous fish contains also black spots and a matt doesn't, that a matt fish has got matt scales.
But what about a fish having matt and shiny scales and that has been red/white/black coloration as a juvenile but lost the black while growing up?

And is a matt fish with some shiny scales still a matt fish?
Please find attached some pictures of fishes in question.
Thanks for your explanations!

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Grant's reply

Hi Miriam

Yes, it can be quite challenging to identify the scale type of a particular fish.
To make things more complex, new types of scale types have emerged; mock metallic, blue belly, and of more interest to you, pseudo matt and colored matt.
I don’t believe they are pseudo matt, so-called because they exhibit usual matt traits such as black button eyes, clear gill covers, and have no guanine, but they have variegated colors similar to normal calicos.
Colored matts could easily be taken as normal calicos, often exhibiting metallic gill plates and guanine deposits. However, when bred, they produce 100% colored matts, not the usual metallic, calico matt mix.
Your fish could be colored matts, but breeding them would be the only way to confirm this.
Looking at the images, I believe that although they are very nice fish generally if they are not colored matts, then they are poorly colored nacreous scaled fish, with predominantly matt coloration.
I assume this because no internal organs, such as the swim bladder, are displayed.
If you look at the image showing a juvenile fish on November 24, you can see internal organs. Once it has got slightly older, on January 25, the fish is no longer transparent.
These fish appear quite young, so I suggest their colors will intensify as they get older.
The easiest way to get better colors into the strain is to breed them to a metallic-scaled fish, which would produce a 50/50 split between metallic and nacreous fish.
For more information, read about scale types on the website here.