males may not be as beautiful as females but they are beautiful (with blue speckles everywhere with red on there belly and a mustard color). About your sal I would ask do you have a background, if not get a dark background because its color will show up better, if anything is stressing the sal that may be the problem as well (meds, too much traffic, bullies, etc.), and it may have bad genetics, but you said a you got it from a reputable store so dunno. This happened to one of my male sals at 3.5-4 in. When I bought it it was so beautiful but it began to lose its color a month after introducing it to my aquarium. I put a dark background on, remove my JD that was chasing every fish and stop with the meds and sure enough its color came back. As for my other sal, I dont know if its a male or female becaue it is showing both trait of a male and female so I guess time will tell, it was 2 inches when I bought it and had no color (2 months ago); now it is showing great color. Your sal may be going through this phase as well.
