Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Here are the Crystals Balls fresh from there first shed... You can already see a bit of color coming in and it will be cool to watch them grow like the original Crystal... I ended up with 2.2 Crystals (Paradox is a female), 1.1 Mojaves, and 0.1 Normal. Very good odds out of a 7 egg clutch!
Tom Baker
Crystal Male #1

Paradox Crystal Female #1

Crystal Pair #1

Crystal Male #2

Crystal Female #2

Crystal Pair #2

They are absolutley stunning. Great odds also. Are you going to be parting with any this season? I cant wait till they come avaialable, im sure you have a waiting list a mile long already.. Great animals, one of my new favorites.
Kim and Matt
N.A.R.C

Thanks for the response! I havent really decided exactly what I am going to do this year, but it is possible that I met let one or two go... I've been trying not to think about it so much since my brain went into overdrive since these little buggers started hatching out. WEll have to wait and see!
Tom Baker

EVER! Congrats!

Paul
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Paul Snyder

Home

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I have to agree...

Tom

Thanks guys! They are some beautful little pythons! It is really cool to hear that they are among peoples favorites! Im stoked to hear that!
Thanks!
Tom Baker

MAN OH MAN those are smoke'n. That paradox is KILLER!!!!!!!!!
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Thank you,
Dave
www.DNReptiles.com

are the crystals a cross with mojave or there own morph I think last year you were thinking they were crosses but I dought you would of had all but one mojaves or mojave cross. A lot going on there very very cool congrats.
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Vince Pramuk

I would tend to believe that it definitely is a cross with the Mojave of some sort... The Crystals do have the Mojave pattern, just a very different coloration which actually looks better with age. The mother has thrown both the Crystals and some "Special Mojaves", so I really don't know how it all plays together, but I think the mother might have a few things going on! Only more time will tell...
Tom Baker

Congrats again!
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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

;

just the right amount of paradox colouration. Verrrry cool animal. Big congrats to you.

The Crystals are definitely one of my favourite morphs. They look, to me atleast, to be the 'middle' between Super Mojaves and Super Phantoms. Of course that's just a theory since I have absolutely no clue what the mother to the Crystals looks like. LOL

Congrats again.

BB

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"Have you hugged your drummer today?" --- Me

Tom,

Congrats! Wow, very nice.

Sincerely, Kyle
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Kyle J. Stevens
Royal Variations Ltd.

Many a false step is made from standing still.

Good odds?
I don't think it gets much better than that.

Are you going to breed crystal x crystal next year to see what you get?
Imagine if there was a patternless super crystal...that WASN'T a white snake!

Congrats on the crystals...and for the record, yes, I am jealous. Haha.
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-Man fears the beast in the Wolf because he does not understand the beast within himself.

The crystal may already be a super in the sense that it might have two mutant copies of the same gene. It may be that mom has an allele of mojave - a different mutation of that gene (it's looking like lesser, phantom, Vin russo, and perhaps others are also mutations of that same gene). The technical term for different versions of the same gene is allele. So far most allele pairs we have seen are normal and one mutant version like normal for albino and albino mutant versions of the gene at the albino location. However, it's looking like this locus is for some reason full of different mutant versions.

If the genes that make up crystal are an allele pair then crystal X crystal would produce eggs each with 25% chance of being super (homozygous) mojave, 50% chance of being crystal, and 25% chance of being whatever the homozygous version of mom turns out to be. There really wouldn't be a super crystal per say as it couldn’t have more than two copies total from all the different versions of the gene.

Thanks for your responses everyone! It makes me stoked to see so much enthusiasm for a project that I very luckily had fall into my lap! Hopefully we will see more exciting Crystals and maybe some crosses in the future! I cannot wait...
Randy,
One of these days, before next breeding season, I want to get in touch and shoot the crap with you... Usually I see your posts and think "this is about to go over my head" , but if you dont mind, it would be cool to run some things over with you...
Tom Baker

Why is a Crystal NOT a Platinum?
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AMAZON REPTILE CENTER

NAMED BEST REPTILE STORE IN LOS ANGELES

When I hatched my first Crystal I thought the same thing and emailed a picture to Ralph... He said that it is not a Platinum... I will attach a photo of a yearling Crystal and you can see they are nowhere near the same (to the best of my knowledge)...
Tom Baker

But it might turn out that both the platinum and the crystal are combinations of mutant alleles within this group. In the case of the platinum it's a combo of lesser and the hidden gene in the lesser platinum normal looking siblings. In the case of the crystal it's mojave and whatever version of the same gene the mom has. In this theory both snakes are sort of supers in that neither snake has any room for a normal version of that common gene. Lots more breedings are needed to confirm or disprove such a theory.