Altum wrote:
San Diego Joe wrote:
Haven't been here for a while. Notice the din has died a tad.

Does anyone have any factual information or a first hand opinion
about "color enhancing" fish foods? Does it actually make those reds
brighter? Will it bring back a color that has faded? I am, of
course, completely skeptical. Plus, they are very much more
expensive than the standard food.

I love feeding color enhancing foods. They usually contain a lot of
carotenoid pigments and/or algae. Fish must obtain carotenoids from
their food - they cannot synthesize the pigments themselves, although
they can interconvert them. Carotenoids produce the green-yellow,
yellow, orange, and red colors, and they're mostly synthesized by
plants and algae. The more pigment you feed your fish, the more it
can store and the brighter the color gets. Carotenoids commonly
occurring in freshwater fish include beta-carotene, lutein,
taraxanthin, astaxanthin, tunaxanthin, alpha-, beta-doradexanthins,
and zeaxanthin.
I used to feed color food to my African cichlids and I had amazing,
yellow-orange N. leleupis. I brought some into a store to sell, the
fish manager was amazed. I also recently switched to TetraMin color
flakes from the regular TetraMin. My gold white clouds went from pale
gold to a rich, orangey gold. My koi angelfish also went from yellow
to orange and developed more areas of color. I've always used color
pellets for my goldfish, and the little sarassa comets I bought
recently have turned from orange to a much deeper red on the color
food.
A commercial example of color feeding is salmon flesh. Wild salmon
have bright pink flesh from eating shellfish which are rich in
astaxanthin (a carotenoid). The shellfish get it from eating algae,
which produce the pigment. Farmed salmon must be colorfed to get the
flesh looking pink the way people expect. Flamingos are also pink
from eating astaxanthin-containing algaes.

I think you would be very happy with the results of a color food in
restoring color to your faded fish.

Why interfere with nature?? Sit and watch your fish, be they in a pond or a
tank. They are all individuals......learn to enjoy them the way nature
intended.
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