When I produced my first batch of Amazon Basins back about 7 years ago now, it was only the 2nd confirmed breeding of these beautiful animals born in the country in the last 20 plus years. This beautiful morph had all but vanished from captive collections here in the United States after being the predominately imported morph back in the early 80's. Back then, captive breeding was not very advanced and there was not much information available concerning neonate Amazon Basins colors, behaviors, etc... After breeding Suriname Emeralds for several years, if anyone would have told me that the vertebral markings (stripes) on the baby Basins would develop as the animals under went ontogenesis, I would have thought they were crazy. Suriname babies are born with all the white they are going to get.

Well, I held back that whole first litter and can remember watching in amazement as the burgundy scales around the faint vertebral markings started to lighten up to a peach color. As the babies changed colors from burgundy to green, those peach colored scales continued to get brighter and brighter. Babies that were born with no sign of a visible stripe ended up with a beautiful 2 to 3 scale stripe. Babies that were born with a little 1 to 2 scale broken stripe got even more white as well.

Below is a fairly startling transformation of one of my "Diamond" baby holdbacks.

Pic 1 below was taken just a few weeks after birth. (Notice the broken 1 scale stripe)

Pic 2 below was taken at approx. 4 months of age. You can start to see the "Peach" colored scales starting to come in. Not white yet, but you can defiantly tell something is happening. There is also a little bit of thickening of the crossbars as well.

Pic 3 below was taken at approx. 8 months of age. The "Peach" colored scales have turned a brighter white. More yet are still visible and coming in just behind the head and neck. Not done yet....

Pic 4 below was taken at approx. 12 months of age. The rest of the "Peach" colored scales have turned white as the animal underwent ontogenesis to green.

Pic 5 below was taken in May 04. She is now a HUGE girl just shy of 3 yrs old. She may actually be on line to breed at age 4. I usually like to breed my girls at 5. These babies have grown at an incredible pace. You can see now the rich coloration coming in around the all the "electric white".

She will continue to "richen up" slowly for the next several years. She is a stunning example one of the best bloodlines I've ever seen. Hope you enjoyed your time lapse journey from birth to a beautiful sub-adult.

Tony Nicoli

Awesome-Arboreals
(904)-545 6553

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