My Black Melanoid….is now white with a stripe

So I’ve read a LOT of literature, including from the Indiana State Axolotl Institution (I think thats what it was called lol)

Anyway, I was FREAKING OUT. Stitch is normal. He still eats fine. Swims fine. Shows his love by greeting me at the glass front and wiggling at me. ZERO has changed with him.
He WAS a Black Melanoid with heavy bright gold flecks down his entire tail.

I did have to give him a tea bath a couple months ago, he’d gotten a fungus on his gills. 2 treatments (1st got the fungus off, 2nd was just for good measure)….but he’s now white except a strip down his back and on his face. It happened over about a 6 month period. I thing I started noticing the patches starting around June. The tea baths were mid October, so unrelated. But he did speed up this “whiting” process after. He’s even slowly one by one “dropped” his long black gills and new ones grow in pink/red.

The literature I read said that the Institute had observed the same thing some years back. No explanation. Other than they’d noticed it with tanks with 2 females, or lone males. Not many, just a couple. But it happened.

Enclosed are 2 pictures. 2 years ago and today. Kid you not, this is the same Axolotl. Except for his personality, I don’t even recognize my little man now lol