OK I am going to go wwwwaaaayyyy out on the limb here (and just so everyone knows, this is Alan typing this, so don't give Amy any greif over the rediculous things I am about to say).
Now the debate has raged on about the cause of misbarring (and in this case I mean the absence of bars that should normally be there) and I think one of the theories that most fish breeders accept is that the top contributing factors are the water quality that the fish are being raised in and their diet. Now "water quality" is a pretty generic term. Let's just go ahead and assume that there is some particular parameter that is not right, perhaps some trace element is missing. So let's make another leap of logic, let's say that there is indeed a particular thing in either the water and/or the diet that is missing (or too low) that results in some fish not developing their bars as they should be. And let's get all conspiracy theoried out here and say that this hatchery in England has identified this missing key and instead of just supplemented to ensure the fish are normal barred, overdosed it..............
Perhaps overdosing this particular thing actually kills 90% of the batch of clowns they are trying to raise and the few that survive come out mutant snowflakes, that would explain the $$$ these fish cost.
Another thing I have noticed. We have/had 3 pairs of these fish. Of the first pair we got the male was DOA. The remaining female we tried to pair with many things (perculas, black ocel) and she would kill them all. Pair #2, after several months of having them the female one day started acting "squirrly" and died very shortly after. The lone male from that pair was then paired with the female of the first pair. And just recently the female of pair #1 started acting a little sqirrly, Amy showed her some special TLC and she is back to acting normal again. Pair #3, everything with them has been normal, no problems.
I think the problems we have seen with 6 specemins of this fish is not typical for tank raised fish and could be supportive to my crazy theory above.
Anyway, I've been wanting to throw that out there for a while now and I thought this was a good a time as any.