Black spots on my yellows

[EowynJane]

  My Yellow labs have black spots on their chins.  I thought it was due to stress since they were quite stressed for a while.  They are acting a lot more relaxed now and the black spots haven't gone away and in one case it looks like it's spread up the side of the face a bit.  Spots aren't raised or growth looking, no obvious signs of anything else except for some loss of colour due to stress.  They eat well and come out of the rocks a good deal more then they used to.

Ideas?

[Aiptasia]

Normal. They'll exhibit this as they get older.

[EowynJane]

Really???  Wow...  I was pretty freaked out about it.  Is this the same kind of thing as barring?  I've only ever heard about it.

[toddnbecka]

It's commonly referred to as the 5 o'clock shadow. Some yellow Lab's have it, some don't, just depends on their breeding. The "clean" Lab's are often called Lion's Cove, since that's the collection point where wild stock w/out the black faces or barring came from. However, when I was keeping/breeding yellow Lab's I swapped off several males for younger fish attempting to get at least one female (several times.) Some of the other lab's at the lfs did show the black as they matured, and they were all from the same breeder. Mine never showed any black on their faces or barring on their bodies, guess I got lucky somehow. Aside from the months and months of frustration, growing out juvies only to find I still didn't have a female...

[EowynJane]

I bought these from a local breeder.. they were supposed to be good quality with no barring, that's why I worried when they started getting the black spots.  Now I'm wondering how much more colour they'll get.