Super General Question on Fish Color

[jandb]

So here goes. I bought a group of 1" heros efa as grow outs last year. I split them into two different tanks recently. Some went into a heavily wooded 100 with 3 daemon. The other 4 went into my 540 with tons of other severums, geos, acaras, wide bars, etc. There is no real bullying in the 540. I see more chasing in the 100. The 540 drips over 40 gpd and the water conditions are excellent, even a bit better than the 100. That said the same fish are so much better colored up in the 100 versus the 540. Does anyone have any thoughts?

 

[Yuki Rihwa]

Fish color up more or better when there is territorial, bully, pecking order in place and it's happen a lot in small tank, while in your 540 that almost 6x times bigger with 4 same species fish I don't think they face each other more often so the color might look dull compare to other fish in smaller tank, let's see other members opinion on this issue

 

[dan518]

Could be a few things, if the fish in the 540 are a fair bit bigger than them they might be trying to remain inconspicuous, the tannins leaching out of the wood in the 100 might be helping there colour, or what yuki said