Tetra Color Bits
- Thread starter r.zanello
- Start date
Perhaps not if they are overall unhealthy, but one can most definitely enhance the color of a fish through their diet. I have seen fish that are naturally yellow, turn orange, just by the type of food they are fed. In fact, the food that did that was Tetra Colorbits. Feed it exclusively to a naturally yellow based fish and you'll see for yourself. I have also seen fish that are naturally orange, become yellow, due to food that had a very low inclusion rate of natural color enhancing agents.
The key is a proper balance of natural color enhancing raw ingredients for all of the fishes natural colors - and then genetics takes over.
Tetra color bits are IMO a rather low quality feed, full of lower cost terrestrial based plant matter, and full of dyes, lakes, and synthetic color enhancing agents that will indeed enhance the color of most fish, but unfortunately in an unnatural manner.
I posted about this previously in a past thread, that also involved Tetra Colorbits.
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?367064-quot-Color-Enhancing-quot-food
+ 1 Or another way to look at it is while some foods might artificially affect fish color, other foods can actually depress the color of a fish compared to it's potential.
Saw this first hand roughly ten years ago, now. During most of my fishkeeping career I'd always been fussy about foods, but after moving to a rural area I couldn't find some of the foods I was used to feeding, so was relying on whatever was conveniently available locally, including Aquadine and Hikari, to name a couple of names, and a couple of common brands of shrimp pellets. What tipped me off that something was going on food wise was that I had gotten a group of beautiful C. mloto and after some months it hit me they looked dull compared to when I first got them-- don't know what the mloto were fed before I got them.
The difference was striking, enough to start me connecting the dots on fish food/nutrition and get me doing a lot of reading and experimentation. Also did a LOT of food testing over the course of a few years and while I started out with no particular prejudices, the results of it all were: 1) I found some foods were much better than others for fish color, vibrance, etc... 2) the better results were coming from foods with fewer cereal and starch ingredients... 3) nearly all the foods I was feeding ten years ago are off my list of anything I'd now feed my fish.
But I also agree with whoever made the point above about water. Food (and overall health) is one part of the equation and good clean water is the other ime.
...Recent article on a subject I've been following for several years-- salmon study
...not just applicable to salmon:
...not just applicable to salmon:
...But it's a complex subject with multiple facets, including the exact method of processing of an ingredient, feed level of the ingredient, environmental aspects, etc.
I used Tetra Color Bits formerly called Discus Bits to my fish for about 15 years before switching to NLS pellets couple years ago. I didn't notice any difference in my fish color in switching the food except that the water is no longer stained orange by the red dye in the Tetra Bits. If fish color changed from yellow to red or red to yellow by eating certain food, it is not color enhancing but color dyeing. Many farm raised salmon has redder flesh than wild caught salmon from food dyeing. There are true color enhancing food out there, called hormoned food. Hormone food can do the magic but can sterilize and shorten the life of fish. I am not aware of any domestic fish food has hormone ingredient, but it is not uncommon in Asian food. Why do you think many Asian Discus and Blood Parrots are so vibrantly colored because they are fed with hormoned food.
Tetra bits is a good trainer food for fish to get acclimated with pellet food. Hikari and NLS pellets can be too hard in texture for fish that have never tried pellets before. The soft texture of Tetra Bits makes it palatable to most fish trying it the first time, and the bright red color can draw their attention as fish can see color. But I stopped using Tetra Bits because it is too messy as it stains the water and turns powderly at the bottom of the can. NSL works best for me now for small fish as it comes with 1 mm size and is less hard than Hikari.
The term color enhancing agent with aquaculture professionals refers to any ingredient or substance that has the potential to produce color in a fish. There is no distinction between natural color enhancing agents such as spirulina, Haematococcus pluvalis, marigold meal, alfalfa meal, krill, shrimp, etc, and synthetic color enhancing agents, such as dyes, lakes, Carophyll Pink, etc. Farm raised salmon have pink/red flesh from Carophyll Pink/Red, which is not a dye, but a synthetic form of astaxanthin.
You obviously didn't read the link that I posted previously, tiger.
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?367064-quot-Color-Enhancing-quot-food
Where I also explained Carophyll Pink and the "SalmoFan", hormone use in discus etc, and how common the use of both are in Asia.
There is also CAROPHYLL® Yellow, and a color fan/chart used by egg producers around the globe to "enhance" the color of the egg yolk. Depending on the color chosen from the chart, you can have light yellow egg yolks, to deep yellow/orange in color, all through the magic of synthetic color enhancers, and diet supplementation.
The hormones used to artifically enhance a fish are typically based on sex hormones (synthetic steroid 17α- methyltestosterone), and enhance color by producing an unnatural "early" sexual maturity, and inducing adult color in juvenile fish. This is a common practice used by vendors to makes sales, as small colorful fish sell much better than small fish with little to no color. It is common practice used by many commercial Asian fish farms that wholesale tropical fish to America. Generally the hormones are added to the water, not the feed itself. The only commercial food that I know of that contained these types of hormones was White Crane, as even female Aulonocara would color up like males when fed this food exclusively. That's actually a very easy way to check food for hormones, at higher levels even female fish will color up.
Most Asian foods use elevated levels of CAROPHYLL® Red, because Red is the color of good luck in Asia and is the most popular color in China. This is how one gets a blood Red parrot fish, Red texas, Red discus, Red flowerhorn, etc, not by using hormones. Sometimes both are used, to bring on sexually mature coloration in an immature fish, and then take that color to the max by utilizing Carophyll Red. Suddenly one has a "Show Stoppa" fish, that unfortunately will not stay looking that way for long once the hormones and synthetic color enhancers wear off.
You obviously didn't read the link that I posted previously, tiger.
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?367064-quot-Color-Enhancing-quot-food
Where I also explained Carophyll Pink and the "SalmoFan", hormone use in discus etc, and how common the use of both are in Asia.
There is also CAROPHYLL® Yellow, and a color fan/chart used by egg producers around the globe to "enhance" the color of the egg yolk. Depending on the color chosen from the chart, you can have light yellow egg yolks, to deep yellow/orange in color, all through the magic of synthetic color enhancers, and diet supplementation.
The hormones used to artifically enhance a fish are typically based on sex hormones (synthetic steroid 17α- methyltestosterone), and enhance color by producing an unnatural "early" sexual maturity, and inducing adult color in juvenile fish. This is a common practice used by vendors to makes sales, as small colorful fish sell much better than small fish with little to no color. It is common practice used by many commercial Asian fish farms that wholesale tropical fish to America. Generally the hormones are added to the water, not the feed itself. The only commercial food that I know of that contained these types of hormones was White Crane, as even female Aulonocara would color up like males when fed this food exclusively. That's actually a very easy way to check food for hormones, at higher levels even female fish will color up.
Most Asian foods use elevated levels of CAROPHYLL® Red, because Red is the color of good luck in Asia and is the most popular color in China. This is how one gets a blood Red parrot fish, Red texas, Red discus, Red flowerhorn, etc, not by using hormones. Sometimes both are used, to bring on sexually mature coloration in an immature fish, and then take that color to the max by utilizing Carophyll Red. Suddenly one has a "Show Stoppa" fish, that unfortunately will not stay looking that way for long once the hormones and synthetic color enhancers wear off.
If by dyeing you mean staining or coloring of skin, scales, etc. by an external colorant rather than the processing of pigmented nutrients, then, while that may be possible, it doesn't take into account how pigmented nutrients work. If by dyeing you mean the normal process by which an animal processes pigmented nutrients to produce their color, then it's just a matter of semantics, since it's not the term I would attach to it.
It's certainly possible for an excess of certain pigmented nutrients (as opposed to food dyes or colorants) to create coloration anomalies-- look up carotenemia, for example. Otherwise, pigmented nutrients can naturally enhance or affect color by their overall effect on health or by how the nutrient is processed in the flesh, scales, feathers, etc. Whether sellers of some fish actually food color or dye the flesh of products like salmon to make it more appealing is one thing. But those who actually raise salmon are adding nutrients to their diet that the fish get naturally in the wild, like astaxanthin, to give them their color.
Setting all of that aside, the processing of pigmented nutrients, like carotenoids, is not as simple as the color of the nutrient equals the color of the skin, feather, scale, etc., as though it were a simple matter of absorption or staining, what I would call dyeing. How a pigmented nutrient becomes a pigment in the animal is actually varied and complex. In different animals the same pigment that produces red/orange in one animal can produce blue or other colors in other animals. It's all a matter of how the nutrient (for example, astaxanthin) is processed, including how it is bound to other proteins (like crustacyanin). The pigmented nutrient can be so tightly held in a protein bond that it changes its shape and light absorption properties. This is why shellfish that may be blue, brown, or other colors turn red when cooked. Cooking releases the astaxanthin from its protein bond.
...My point as it applies to this thread being that nutrition can affect color because of the overall effect on health and because of the natural (and complex biochemical) ways in which animals use pigmented nutrients to produce their colors.
