[akane]

Patterns are the worst to cross because you can rapidly make a mess back to the faded little dot pattern of the wild ones. If they have a similar pattern you can get away with mixing colors to a point. I don't know the exact genes that start to cause the colors to muddy. I maintain an orange/red streaked line and a blue/yellow streaked line with lyretails. Who knows what's in my feeder tank. Truly. Who knows what all of them have combined into. Every now and then I've thrown freebie "fancies" in and I haven't cleaned the brown and spot algae off the front in awhile lol I just dip them out when I need to feed something. Algae is not actually harmful. It even corrects problems in the water. In this case it's just a sign of some fertilizer run off you get living in a farming state.