Who thinks that these are hormoned?

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tydus

tydus

Piranha
MFK Member
Jul 11, 2007
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Lately, these auctions have been coming up on aquabid, and I think that all these ruby reds are hormoned. I can't beleive that they can go so high, I always see ruby reds like that at my lfs and I never intend to buy, because every time I go there, the once so pretty fish, are all colorless and dying when I come back a week later. Even the females have color, which I think is hormones. My lfs also carries hormoned female ruby reds like these and they always ends up getting sick or dying. Check the link for the auctions and go the ones with ruby red on the title. Who agrees?
http://www.aquabid.com/cgi-bin/auction/auction.cgi?disp&viewseller&Wudthishad
 
Well a week is very short for homones to disappear. Likely the fish just get really stressed from moving, and suddenly are no longer the dominant fish in the tank.

And honestly all the fish I see there are not hormoned. A lot of them aren't even close to the color you can get. Some are obviously just dominate males in breeding colors. With hormoned fish there fins will be much longer, and they just don't fit proportionally.

Also on aquabid you have to remember. A photo can be easly made to look whatever way you want. So say on some of the eureka males. They overexposed. (Or used the "vibrant" color setting) on there camera.

Note the hormoned females tend to look like this. (I just grabbed it off of a previous post.)

cichlid01.jpg
 
Well it doesn't disappear in exactly a week, the fish has probably been at the lfs for a while, and then when I see em, they look amazing, and when I come back in a week, they are looking dead and unattractive. Honestly, those look hormoned to me, and when they are coming from Asia too, it is even more suspicious.
 
I understand being suspicious of fish stores. I assume you are talking more about chain stores. But I would say that in general anyone who is a successful seller on aquabid couldn't get away with selling them. (And most small LFS can't either.)
 
Nope, the stores are private, not like petsmart or petco, etc. That's why I buy online from reputable sellers. I can't trust a fish store unless it was someone I know, an impulse buy, and if it was for equipment.
 
I had bought a fish called albino strawberry peacock about a year ago. I got four of them. They were hot pink on mainly there backs and ranged from pink to orange colored. Over time i noticed that the hot pink color faded and you could detect what appeared to be needle marks with a dot of pigment in them. So watch for that as well as hormoned fish. These fish all survived and were healthy and spawned for me. I now believe they were simply normal albino auloncara (which species im not sure on , could have been one of 3 i found) that were just dyed. Dishonest to be sure. Lucky for me the fish turned out to be nice looking enough on their own and didnt really need the added color to be colorful in my opinion. Their fry also look very nice and they seem to breed true. Pretty sad when a nice looking specimen of a very colorful cichlid is not enough for some people.
 
tydus;1909831; said:
Well it doesn't disappear in exactly a week, the fish has probably been at the lfs for a while, and then when I see em, they look amazing, and when I come back in a week, they are looking dead and unattractive. Honestly, those look hormoned to me, and when they are coming from Asia too, it is even more suspicious.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's done at the retail store. IMO it's done by the wholesaler. I've heard they do it to ID the males because those sell better, and it helps the buyer know what the fish will look like when it's fully mature. A week or two later and the hormones start wearing off. If it's a mixed tank, then the LFS screwed up and you won't know what type of peacock you're getting. Give it time though, as they grow the color comes back. If the fish die in the LFS tanks, well that's just poor fish keeping on their part.
 
We ordered from a new importer and got some hormoned fish that we are selling at a reduced price. We have had them in the shop for several weeks now and they are still very colorful so I doubt it was the hormones fading maybe not optimal tank conditions.....
 
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