"Color Enhancing" food

[12 Volt Man]

But they should not be fed as a staple since they are rarely nutritionally complete and can actually "burn" the colors on the fish, causing odd patches of color to appear.

just curious where you got this info from? I have never heard of this before.

in my hobbyist experience, I have found no harm to feeding colour enhancers like Tetra colour bits as a stable, supplemented by other foods.

in fact, for many discus keepers, Tetra colour bits is the number one dried food (usually supplemented by frozen and /or live foods as well).

just saying that I don't think you will find any negatives to feeding colour enhancers, at least those made by Tetra (like tetra colour flakes etc)

 

[RD.]

just saying that I don't think you will find any negatives to feeding colour enhancers, at least those made by Tetra (like tetra colour flakes etc)

That would depend entirely as to what one considers a negative.
Tetra is well known for using an excessive amount of color enhancing agents (including lakes & dyes) to the point of causing fish that are naturally yellow, to turn orange. Most discus people know this to be true as well, some simply don't care, as long as their fish are "colorful".
In the discus world, even the use of hormones are considered acceptable by many of the top discus gurus in Asia.

In the link below, even the Grand Champion of the show sounds like it was 'juiced' for the event.

http://forum.bidka.org/showthread.php?t=3018&page=3

I was in Singapore two weeks ago to attend the Discus Judging course of Discus Club (Singapore) and for the Aquarama Fair. There were some heavily colour enhanced fish competing in the Show. All of them made it to the first three in their classes. Some of the fish were hormone fed and some were colour enhancer fed. After the competition, I had the opportunity to discuss this subject with Dr. Sun, Andrew Soh, Colin Hang, Brandon Wu and Ivan Seah. All of them agreed that excessive amount of colour enhancers and hormone should not be fed to the fish BUT, they all believe that both colour enhancers and hormones CAN be used to reveal the real colour potential of the fish. Of course, nobody can really tell to which extend. We all agreed that the fish should not be coloured to the point where it looks artificial. However, some fish who got rewards on the Aqurama Show were so much enhanced that they were looking like they were made of plastic, including the Grand Champion. I talked to the owner of the fish Raymond and he told that he was using only natural ingredients in fish food to show the colour but even the fins were yellow which is a good indicator of heavily used articial colour enhancers.
This brings us to the point whether natural colour enhancers maybe used and artificial ones should not be used. I believe this should be the case. I don't believe that feeding paprika or spiriluna gives any harm to discus. However, it is not the case with artificial ones. All the articial enhancers which are beinig used on fish today were fist developed to be used on cage birds, especially canaries. Experiments made on canaries which were fed canthaxanthin in excessive amount showed that it causes liver and retina damage. On the bird products there is a warning on the label about this. However, most of the fish owners/breeders is unaware of this fact.

Natural color enhancers used in the proper proportions will only enhance what the fish is genetically wired to produce. Synthetic color enhancers can artifically enhance a fish to the point that they no longer look anything like they would if/when those synthetic enhancers are removed from their diet. Pretty much the same effect as when a hormoned fish is taken off of hormones.

 

[12 Volt Man]

while I agree that certain practices in Asia (like juicing such that juvenile fish have adult colours etc) are bad and should not be continued, I do not agree that tetra foods have such a drastic effect on the colours of fish, discus or otherwise.

I kept discus for many years and yes, I did feed colourbits daily. but I have been using colourbits since they came out back in 91 or so, mainly because my fish have always aggressively eaten them and grown up very well on them. but I feed lots of other stuff too.

I would be curious to see what the folks over on simplydiscus would have to say about Tetra foods (good or bad) since last time I was a frequent visitor there, they were very popular with many of the 'gurus' and breeders over there.

I know on this board, Tetra foods aren't very popular but I have always used them with great success.

 

[RD.]

I've read the exact same concerns about Tetra Color Bits on Simply (yellow fish turning orange) and quite frankly there are very few people on Simply that I would consider gurus when it comes to fish nutrition. God forbid one dares try something new over there, or not follow the status quo. Last year there were some locals planning a group buy from Jeffrey Yang, everyone stated that he fed an all natural diet, had the best colored fish, etc. I emailed Jeff & the following is a portion of his response to me;

To achieve better red colour, i mix carophyll pink into the beef heart."

I have also seen labidochromis caeruleus (a very yellow fish) turn very orange, when fed color bits on a daily basis. There's lots of fish food manufacturers that IMO use an excessive amount of synthetic color enhancing agents to artificially enhance the color of a fish. Potential health concerns aside, I personally want my fish to look their natural god given color, not some jacked up artifically enhanced color found in a bottle that contains lakes, dyes, Carophyll Pink, etc. But hey, that's just me.

 

[knifegill]

One of my goldfish books calls it "burning", as do the employees at my LFS. I found this on a quick search: I give up on turning it white. Just highlight it I guess.

[#FF0000][FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]Re: [omo_ang] White tiger shiro [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica] Hi Andrew

,

Nice piece you've got here. Perhaps the yellowish skin could be due to the color enhancing food you're giving. IMHO, shiros don't really need any of the color enhancing food. And any overuse of color food may result in permanent yellowish tint in the shiroji. A good siroji should have the whitest shiroji as possible, some may say as white as snow. I believe this is one of the prerequiste in any koi competition when judging a shiro utsuri.

Good Luck.

[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]
[/FONT]http://www.koi.com.my/forum/KOI_Talk_C1/Koi_Appreciation_F8/White_tiger_shiro_P112652/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_printable;post=112652;guest=18974648&t=search_engine

 

[RD.]

All commercial foods contain color enhancing agents, most people just don't understand the basics behind most of the raw ingredients used in fish food, and how they play a role in the color AND the overall health of the fish. Some of the most powerful antioxidant & immune stimulants are also natural color enhancers. Raw ingredients such as antarctic krill, spirulina, and various micro algae such as Haematococcus pluvialis all play a major role in the enhancement of disease resistance & regulation of growth in a fish.

The only way that the shiroji of a koi will be affected negatively by color enhancing agents is if/when they are used in excessive amounts.
When unnatural color enhancement takes place it is typically caused by an excessive use of synthetic color enhancing agents. When used properly, in controlled quantity, natural color enhancers will actually make the white portion of a fish, even whiter.

The problem is it is far cheaper for a manufacturer to jack up the color enhancing properties of their feed by simply adding a boat load of synthetic color agents such Carophyll Pink, etc, than by doing things the natural way. These are the same type of color enhancement agents used by the salmon industry, which is why a farm raised salmon has pink flesh, instead of a bland grey. (guess which ones the consumer would choose to eat?)

It all depends on how much is added to the feed, you just have to pick a number from the slick little color chart & dial in what kind of unnatural color that you are seeking.

 

[dennisedward]

Food coloring in fish will harm them because it is not good for them.If anybody wants ,read more on kancor .

 

[Mdoka]

I feed Northfin and spirulina. I’ve tried many other brands supposed to promote color enhancements in the past. Ive found, as long as you’re feeding a “quality food”, lighting and tank scape are what really brings out the popping colors.