Can you really make a fish more colorful ?

[RD.]

Fish on Fire - Stating that all one requires is shrimp & spirulina shows just how little you understand about overall natural color enhancement, and what's required to make a fish show its best, and most natural coloration when kept in captivity.

You seem to have a real hard on with regards to NLS, yet you are the only one in this discussion that keeps mentioning it, repeatedly. lol

Yes, there are lots of cheap foods on the market, but I've been in this game a very long time, and like most things in life you generally get what you pay for. If all one wants is quick cheap color, that's certainly not difficult to achieve in fish food - especially in certain spectrums, such as orange/red. But that type of cheap synthetic color enhancement doesn't equate to "better", and suggesting that it is once again just shows how little you truly understand about any of this.

 

[GonePhishing]

Or if you a fast approach and you want to add your own design into it..

 

[Fish on Fire]

Sorry RD had to derail your thread into yet another fish food debate OP but the answer is that there are ways to enhance your fish's coloration that you can control. Again, water parameters/quality, dominance, and finally diet. Most effective bang for your buck food would be Tetra Colorbits and if you want to enhance the greens/blues add some food that contains spirulina.

 

[ryansmith83]

The quality of food (from a nutritional standpoint) has nothing to do with its ability to enhance color. Color is enhanced using ingredients like spirulina, astaxanthin, and other natural and/or synthetic products. NatuRose, a Hawaii-farmed form of astaxanthin derived from red microalgae, has long been used by discus hobbyists to enhance any fish with red pigment. It's how you get discus like San Merah and Red Melons to turn bright red. You mix it into prepared beefheart or seafood mixes, then freeze it. If you quit feeding foods high in astaxanthin, the color will dull or fade over time. Tetra Bits are full of astaxanthin which is why they are often crushed up and used in prepared beefheart recipes. I personally think there are much better foods out there that offer more complete nutrition than Tetra Bits, but that's neither here nor there in regards to this thread.

Foods that contain natural sources of astaxanthin include krill and shrimp which is why you'll also see these used in discus diets and beefheart recipes. If you have red/orange cichlids, the same foods will help with color.

I've noticed that cichlids raised in outdoor vats tend to have beautiful, vivid natural colors. I'm guessing this is from a mix of sunlight and the wide variety of larvae and insects they probably find.

 

[Endo]

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.

This is hilarious. You "guarantee" tetra would result in better colors than NLS, so if one were to put it to the test, what do they get once your guarantee is proven wrong?

You are always attack NLS and claiming its all hype and instead you support Massivore when THAT is all hype and has horrible ingredients. Spirulina is all you need eh? Shows that even after your 15yrs of experience, you still dont know anything about quality nutrition. Join the others who constantly lose to discussion against RD's many more years of experience and knowledge.

Sorry to the OP, but this needed to be addressed.
Just keep your water quality superb and feed a natural quality staple like NLS.

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[Freshwaterpredators]

Lol love debates over certain brands of foods but on a serious note, I agree that a well balanced diet and water quality play a big role in a fishes color. Everyone says good water quality... But what exactly is deemed "good"? Is it what you can test for with the test equipment that you can buy at a store? Mostly yes!but I also believe that there are other factors in the water that may not show up on test strip.. Like for example my water, "the Alaskan Glacier water" lol I couldn't tell you exactly what's in it or what's not in it. I am by no means an expert on water quality but for some reason whatever is in the water I'm using is doing an excellent job!! I never have to condition my water. Basically as long as I have healthy media/bacteria in my filters I can start up a brand new tank and add fish without cycling it. And I do water changes religiously to keep down ammonia and nitrates. Ha ha really don't know where I was going with that:/

I feed a variety of foods which Mix into separate containers pending food size. Which consist of hikari bio gold, excel, sometimes NLS, food I bought from kensfish.com- shrimp pellets, krill pellets, growth pellets, and color pellets. I do occasionally feed massivore as well but only to certain fish and as treats. Then when it's time to condition my pairs for spawning I add bloodworms, live earthworms, frozen talapia, market shrimp, and frozen krill.

Another thing that helps bring certain colors out is the color of substrate, and lighting which all depends on what colors your trying to enhance. Now I don't mean get colored lights like a lot of international flowerhorn breeders do lol you also have to be into your fish and take care of them don't be one of those guys who buys a fish tank and slap everything together, throw fish in and only do water changes when you can't see your fish due to low visibility and then wonder why your fish doesn't have colors


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[seel1990]

This is hilarious. You "guarantee" tetra would result in better colors than NLS, so if one were to put it to the test, what do they get once your guarantee is proven wrong?

You are always attack NLS and claiming its all hype and instead you support Massivore when THAT is all hype and has horrible ingredients. Spirulina is all you need eh? Shows that even after your 15yrs of experience, you still dont know anything about quality nutrition. Join the others who constantly lose to discussion against RD's many more years of experience and knowledge.

Sorry to the OP, but this needed to be addressed.
Just keep your water quality superb and feed a natural quality staple like NLS.

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^^agree!


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[triz316]

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.

i know this is a CA thread butin my experience NLS in african Peacocks is better than anything else. Also i now have Dovii's who will not eat NLS.

 

[Aquanero]

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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As far as your question is concerned it is my opinion (I'm talikin' about aquariums here) that while I hold all these important to the physiological well being of the fish. The absences of any one of the above mentioned pieces of the puzzle and the "environment" colapses. So having said that it is the environment that determines the final outcome. Optimize the environment and the rest follows. Good water (as defined by optimal conditions for the species involved) good lighting conditions that emulate the duration and spectrum the species evolved in and quality food which would be a food source that as closly as possibile contains all the necessary consituants the species would encounter in its daily life of foraging/hunting for food as the case may be. So in my opinion food dose have a factor in the fishes color but only as it relates to the rest of its environment. I am not refering to artaficaly enhancing the color but the best natural color that can be achieved by optomizing the overall environment. We do the best we can recreating as closly as possible a natural environment in a glass box.

HTH

 

[Anchovie]

What about all the stuff we filter out of the water to obtain good "water quality". The insect larvae, micro algae, dead/rotting fauna... The list goes on. Could any or all of these contribute to why wild caught fish are usually much more vibrant than those in aquaria? There are so many things on the bottom of a lake that we simply can't recreate in our living room that these fish likely would graze on all day, since they don't have the availability of nls pellets floating in front of their faces. Also eating live fish, inverts, and insects could contribute. After all, most of the large cichlids we keep are predators by nature, and no freeze dried pellet is going to be better than what they have evolved to eat. Nature has given us the perfect diet for these fish, and it doesn't look like pellets.


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