My ornate bichir's color seems to have faded quite a bit over the past week. What can I do or feed it with to get it back to its original color?
Fading bichir colors
- Thread starter Ornate Bichir
- Start date
beblondie;3219669; said:
From black to dark gray. Also, I thought feeding food high in protein will only help it to grow, not to increase the amount of black pigment in it. A while ago, I visited a fish store and saw them selling ornate bichirs almost complete white, except for a fuzzy black stripes on its head. Why is that so?
It's not the food but the substrates. Try using black, tan or red. Don't use light color substrates such as white.
What kind of substrates do you have BTW. Also stress makes a bichir color fade out.
What kind of substrates do you have BTW. Also stress makes a bichir color fade out.
Nope, that's a picture I found while googling. I think that's a competition picture organised by MonsterFishKeepers.
until now I still have the same problem as you. I tried darkening the substrate giving them shrimp with the exoskeleton, giving them no light, putting lots of hide aways and out of my 6 ornate bichir only 1 has showed the good colors.
uting;3226417; said:
What color of substrates are you using? Black substrates will only darken the base color and you'll end up making them looking like a charcoal, especially lower jaw bichirs. However they are good with upper jaw bichirs as they develop more green. Tan and red are always good, it higher the contrast of the pattern and doesn't blend with the base color.
Check my Koiba update and you'll see the improvement over time on a red substrates.
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=251465