Clown Loaches and substrate colours

[cypher1024]

Before I set up my tank, I spent about month browsing MFK for ideas. I'd seen a lot of people using a black background and black substrate with big cichlids and it made their colours look amazing, so I thought I'd try that with my clowns. Unfortunately, pretty much all of my clowns went dark every day as soon as the lights came on.

I tried all kinds of things to fix the problem. I fed them foods that were supposed to help improve their colours, I added more hiding places, I added more dither fish and even more Clowns. They were fat and happy, but very dark in colour. Then I stumbled on this thread. In it, redshark1 showed pictures of his loaches before and after a substrate change (from dark to light). I'd been thinking about swapping to sand for a while, and the pool filter sand was only $1/kg, so I thought it was worth a try.

The result was instant, and amazing. The black, clown-shaped fish in my tank magically turned into clown loaches! I couldn't be happier!

 

[West1]

Before and after Pics please

 

[cypher1024]

I'm an idiot. I don't think I have any good 'before' pcitures. I honestly didn't think it was going to work. The thread I linked to has a very good approximation of my experience.

This is the only picture I could find. Please ignore the colours on the big clowns - they had just come out of hiding so they were looking very bright. You can see the dull colouring on the smaller guys. This is about as bright as they would get. I think they were excited to have some big siblings in the tank. Normally their yellow parts were almost the same colour as their black bands.



I'll get some 'after' pictures when the lights come on in about half an hour.

 

[cypher1024]

Here are the 'after' pictures. I know it may not look like a huge difference, but I assure you that's becuase I'm a crappy photographer, not because they haven't changed much.
I'm not sure what they thought the camera was, but as soon as I picked it up, a few of the greyed out and a bunch of the others went and hid.







Bonus shot: Looking into the window of the loach house that my two big guys live in. Well, they really live in an overturned terracotta flower trough with the ends cut off. They used to get spooked when I would walk past the end of the tank, so I stuck that house to the end of the tank so they felt safer.

 

[JesusFish]

That big Clown Loach in that first picture you posted looks AMAZING! So plump. lol. I have some little one inchers right now on sandbox sand substrate and they are BRIGHT orange. haha

 

[random fish guy]

I'm not fat, I'm big boned!!!lol Nice massive loaches!!! And some oddballs in there!

 

[peacock madness]

nice loaches. ive got my 4 4"ers in my 125 with pool filter sand and they have always had good colors. i just recently added a black background and it realy makes their colors come out!

 

[cypher1024]

Thanks guys!