VPI vs MJ vs TSK Axanthic

Gcr stands for gateway city reptiles and
Jeff Nemanius is the breeder who discovered the line. Quite a few of the St. Louis area breeders are working with it. I know that it isn’t compatible with tsk or vpi. I’m unsure of joliff and it has been around for quite a few years. But I can’t tell you exactly when it was discovered. I didn’t get my group from Jeff I got them from a friend who I’ve been working on a sable project with.

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That’s really cool. I love Axanthic and that line is darker it seems and the grey/silver tones really pop. Definitely keep us informed down the line as the age. I’ll have to try and research and find some more info on it.
Thanks for the knowledge.

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Thanks! Those are older pictures that group has a lot more size to them now.

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Sweet project for sure. If I got back into balls( I focus on SD/D retics now) those would be the first on my list.

I have VPI hets. I got VPI because they were the most available and best examples (visuals from the same breeder) I could find in my area.

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Ohhh… I suppose we could hijack this thread and continue the topic of Axanthics, @armiyana, since all lines including Black has been mentioned here!!! :grin::grin::grin:

@mcgoveran can throw his new SRP Axanthic line in the hat here…

As of June 2025…

VPI - The OG Axanthic… Most popular of all…

Jolliff - Least popular form of Axanthic… it’s been theorized that Jolliff is actually Hypoxanthic… There are still few that still works with Jolliff out there as of today…

TSK/Black - It’s been proven to be the same through genetic testing… However, Black Axanthic originated at VPI and there’s plenty of thoughts out there on Black while TSK originated at The Snake Keeper…

MJ/GCR - Proven to be the same through genetic testing… History has both originating via related Piebald lineage directly from Peter Kahl… MJ originated at Markus Jayne in 2008 while GCR originated at Gateway City Reptiles in 2010

SRP - Newest line… Originated at Snake River Pythons… Piebald is involved in this too… Tested to be incompatiable with all lines mentioned above except for Jolliff which has no test at this time…

As of right now, I have VPI hets, TSK (Visual), and MJ hets in my collection and hoping to get a SRP Het shortly in the future…

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Yep! That pretty much is the rundown :+1:

I only have VPI and VPI hets in my collection, but I love axanthics. I just took a while to finally get one because you can’t really trust photos to really capture the color. I found a beautiful gal at a show that is holding her color fairly well at 2 now.

I’m following the SPR threat because currently I’m seeing really awesome looking noodles without a bunch of photo edits from sellers. It’s just a matter of seeing how well they keep their color as well. I would love to get my hands on one regardless.

Of course there are great examples from each line … But it’s a matter of quality and luck to keep them from browning out too much.

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I’m not 100% sure about this, but I suspect that Justin at Kinova may be working on producing a double recessive Axanthic. That is, an animal that is visual for two forms of Axanthic. He asked Ben at RGI in a YouTube video if he thought such an animal would look different than your standard Axanthic. VPI, TSK, and MJ are all on different chromosomes and are also all testable, so it’s now possible to reliably answer that question. There is a high likelihood that there won’t be a significant difference, however we in the Ball Python world are very aware that results can be … shall we say … unexpected. :smiley:

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Wow… So many ways this could go… Now this makes me wonder what did others do with all those DHs from trying to see if this line was compatible with that line??? If Justin is in fact doing that, I hope one is a Jolliff… Unless he’s doing it with a “Black” TSK he has… Now you got me thinking that maybe I should go ahead and invest in a Jolliff het and go from there and see if it’s actually a weak form of Axanthic or a Hypoxanthic…

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When it comes down to brass tacks, “BlkAx” originated with TSK. The history is very well documented. In a nutshell, Tracy bought a het from TSK to see if their line was the same as VPI line. When she bred it to a VPI visual and did not get any visuals she concluded they were not the same. Then she just folded those offspring back into their breeding pool. And all of the sudden, years later, their breeding pool suddenly started making two different “types” of Ax.

It is beyond obvious that some of the offspring from the original pairing were double hets and that eventually the TSK gene ended up randomly distributed in the collection and randomly created visuals. THis also answers your question of:

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I have opined on this many times and in many places in the past…

The most probable outcome is that the double visual hatchlings will likely not be immediately evident but as they age they would be more likely to maintain their silver/grey colour and not brown out as much as the single gene versions
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Technically speaking, all Axanthics are more properly Hypoxanthic. The reason every line of Axanthic eventually browns out is because there is some level of yellow pigment that is developed and accumulates over time. There are no mutations to date that fully prevent the formation of yellow pigmentation

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