Can you really make a fish more colorful ?

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cichlid_obsessed92

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 14, 2012
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lowell, massachusetts
Most foods on the market claim to do so much to improve the color of a fish but does food really play that big of a factor ? I just can't see food being more important to color than water quality, genetics and even the amount And type of light the fish recieves, what are your opinions ?

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I think it's just a part of the bigger picture. It definitely has a huge part, but like you said, water quality and at the end of the day genetics play the biggest role IMO. Diet and water quality are big factors in taking full advantage of genetics though......

maximize those 3 and you're off to a great start
 
Genetics - diet - water quality. IMO in that order.

With regards to color, it doesn't matter how great the genetics are, or the water quality, if you feed your fish a diet lacking in essential nutrients, including raw ingredients that contain natural color enhancing agents. In captivity fish are not capable of producing carotenoid and xanthophyll pigments, therefore these must be supplied in the diet.


As an example, last year I purchased a stunning young male midas that I *thought* was an xanthic morph, it was as yellow as a lemon, with the odd white patches. Never seen anything like it. All of its siblings were lemon yellow as well, and the owner had several of them, all semi-adults in the 5-8" range. The owner was feeding a low quality bulk farm feed, which made me go hmmmm, but I couldn't imagine that it was so low in color enhancing agents (natural or synthetic) that it caused what should have been an orange & white creamsicle midas, to appear to be xanthic. Within 1 week of placing this fish on a properly balanced diet the answer started to become clear - it was shifting from lemon yellow, to tangerine orange. In less than 30 days it had transformed to a stunning orange & white "creamsicle" midas. Neither genetics nor water quality improved this fishes color from the lackluster diet that it had been raised on.

Having said that, most of the tropical fish foods currently on the market contain enough color enhancing agents to produce fairly consistent color in most fish. Some are better than others, some contain enough synthetic astaxanthin (Carophyll Pink) to turn a fish that is naturally yellow, to orange/pink.

Sometimes even genetically inferior fish can be made to look good using artificial color enhancement via the diet.
A prime example of this .....
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/f...My-Red-Discus-Before-amp-After-Carophyll-Pink

You won't get those kind of results via water changes. :)
 
Hello; Some things come to mind regarding fish colors. The first is to have a tank setup where the fish have some sort of suitable secure or hiding area. I have noted that fish are often pale in a bare tank and then color up when in a community tank with structure or plants.

In a group the dominant individual may often be the more colorful.

I have found that a dark substrate to enhance the colors of many fish. I think it is part of a survival mode. The fish colors become darker to better blend in to the bottom as thus to not stand out so much to predators looking down from above.

Some fish are not in full color out of breeding season, another probable survival mechanism. Some of the minnows and darters in my area are very startling at times but very drab the rest of the time.
 
Genetics, water quality, dominance, and then diet. Diet is last because you can get great color and the same color feeding generic and cheap food as you would feeding hyped stuff like NLS. Thus diet isn't as important as the other factors. I guarantee you would get better colors feeding tetra colorbits than you would NLS pellets.
 
I feed those tetra color bites to my blood parrots. They went from light orange to dark red with no change in water params or lighting. I'll consider that proof, although its more difficult to color up a fish on the blue color range than the red color range.


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If one considers the OP's question;
..... does food really play that big of a factor ?
Click to expand...
then according to your responses, the answer would be yes.

Some of the lower quality foods with large quantities of synthetic color enhancing agents are classic examples of what one can achieve via the diet, that genetics and water quality would never achieve.

If I can make a fish that is naturally yellow, turn orange, wouldn't that obviously trump genetics and/or water quality? Did any of you actually click on the link in my previous comment and take a close look at how easily the color of a fish can be manipulated via synthetic color enhancing agents such as Carophyll Pink?

Diet is last because you can get great color and the same color feeding generic and cheap food as you would feeding hyped stuff like NLS. I guarantee you would get better colors feeding tetra colorbits than you would NLS pellets.
Click to expand...

Your definition of "great" is obviously different than mine, because where I come from yellow fish remain yellow, they don't turn orange, and pink fish don't turn blood red. Any idjit can make a fish food that due to massive amounts of lakes, dyes, and synthetic color enhancers super saturates certain spectrums of color in a fish. It's a LOT more difficult to enhance all of a fishes natural colors, in a natural manner, as seen in nature.
 
RD. said:
If one considers the OP's question; then according to your responses, the answer would be yes.

Some of the lower quality foods with large quantities of synthetic color enhancing agents are classic examples of what one can achieve via the diet, that genetics and water quality would never achieve.

If I can make a fish that is naturally yellow, turn orange, wouldn't that obviously trump genetics and/or water quality? Did any of you actually click on the link in my previous comment and take a close look at how easily the color of a fish can be manipulated via synthetic color enhancing agents such as Carophyll Pink?



Your definition of "great" is obviously different than mine, because where I come from yellow fish remain yellow, they don't turn orange, and pink fish don't turn blood red. Any idjit can make a fish food that due to massive amounts of lakes, dyes, and synthetic color enhancers super saturates certain spectrums of color in a fish. It's a LOT more difficult to enhance all of a fishes natural colors, in a natural manner, as seen in nature.
Click to expand...

Not at all difficult to enhance the natural colors. Pick up anything with spirulina and supplement with some type of shrimp and tada, got pretty much everything covered. Again, there are much cheaper and easily more effective foods than NLS. And no, I'm not affiliated with any brands, just speak from 15 years of experience with numerous brands of fish food and fish species.
 
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