Craig, certainly not raining my parade at all. If you look back to see how they’ve developed you’ll see that as the fish are growing, the maroon “spots” are getting ever larger. Keep in mind that these fish are probably 1.25″…still “small”. The Lightning Maroon was orders of magnitude larger when it arrived, and even more so now.

Take a look at how the white patterns are starting to emerge and break up at the tail. Look at how ever-larger spots are showing up in the headstripe. Look at the base of the “mid-saddle” to see again how the pattern is evolving. I really think that Lightning Maroons will be one of those fish that significantly change and evolve in pattern as they grow. I could be wrong, but the observations so far suggest that no, these are going to look like Mom WHEN they reach MOM’s size.