Scared FH - can't get the colors

[tnt321]

I have two FH around 4 inch in size, they are in the same tank (may be 35 gallon), but divided. They are so scared of anything going on outside the tank that I don't see any nice color from them. They have black stripe like the convicts.
When I turn the tank light on they run like crazy hitting the fence/divider and the tank glass so hard that you can hear the collision sound. After that they just stand in the same position for a long time.
So I try not to turn the tank light on much, so they seem to be abit better but still have no colors come out except the flower line.

In the past I have blue gravel and non-dark back ground. So they colors are usuually black and when they're scared you see stripes.

Recently, I've changed to white gravel, and now they're white or white with stripes.

Any suggestions to improve their colors so I can stay with the FH. I'm thinking of going back to the chiclids.
Thanks.

 

[fhcruiser]

what you see are stress bars, might consider putting them in a different place in your house where there is not too much traffic, try to feed them with lights on and try to open the lights longer, put some pebbles or gravels and a plant background you can find in lfs, hope this help

 

[1 ill g]

just give them time to adjust

 

[oHsNaP1337]

How long have you had them? They are scared cause they think you are a predator, they need time to adjust to you...

 

[tnt321]

Thank you for your response folks.

I have the 2 fish for more than 6 months. I changed the background two months ago and changed the gravel about 3 weeks ago. Obviously, learning from this valuable site.

One more thing I forgot to mention that I have a cockatiel. The cage is 6 feets away from the fish tank. It locates on the same side with the tank and I covered the fish tank side so that the FH do not see the cocaktiel. However, the bird makes more noise when seeing people around.
I wonder if the FH can hear the cockatiel sound and get scared.

One suggestion is to leave the light longer, but I see them moving around more when there is no light. If I should leave the light longer how many hours do you recommend?

For the traffic, I see some Chinese restaurants have beautiful FH swimming around careless of the surrounding customers.

I'm still pretty new to FH so your adive is good information for me.

Thanks.

 

[midasman714]

if you've had them for 2 months and they are still skiddish, then its probably their personality... OR it might be your water? whats your parameters. bad water quality can be a factor.