+1
It seems like others on here just look past the plain proof of what some of us on here are saying not by hypothesis but actual breeding results done by us not someone else on a fish farm not sharing how they did it.
So plain and simple many people have been breeding either texas species together and not getting even one faded or amelanism form produced, yet breed one of these fish to a species or hybrid with the fading gene and some offspring can be produced first generation. If a texas cichlid species already carried the gene in a recessive form then by now it would have already showed its head with so many people having bred them over the years. That is not to say that it does not lie hidden in some form in a group of fish somewhere in its native range.
Last to point out is in the non hybrid fading species the same proof can be seen/proven as they have non-faded forms found in the wild. When these non-faded forms are bred together no faded offspring are produced hence they breed true. Now take one of these and breed it to a faded form and you will get babies both ways. Those faded offspring only contain genes from one parent for it so are heterozygous not homozygous for the fading trait.
This is also why in the hybrids we can breed two faded fish and not all the offspring peel or fade. It tells us that our breeders are heterozygous for the trait or and this may be more likely that the fading trait takes multiple sets of genes to express and not just one complete set on one alleles.
