Buyer's Remorse

[BlueTang<3]

Feed it a good quality food, lots of vitamins or the colour enhancing stuff, typically as the fish ages the colours come in better as well but diet plays a large roll on looks.

[Reef_Geek]

the secret ingredient for colouring up fish is astaxanthin.

actually, it's not really a secret.

Flamingos get their colour from krill, many fish foods contain Spirulina, aquaculture uses salmon skin in formulated foods etc etc... I've seen FW swordtails fed so much of this stuff, you cut the fish and the flesh is bright red inside.

Try prolonged feeding using fresh macro-algae and/or make your own foods (search threads such as this one) and add lots of salmon skin.

[Reef_Geek]

Originally Posted by Reef_Geek

the secret ingredient for colouring up fish is astaxanthin.

actually, it's not really a secret.

Flamingos get their colour from krill, many fish foods contain Spirulina, aquaculture uses salmon skin in formulated foods etc etc... I've seen FW swordtails fed so much of this stuff, you cut the fish and the flesh is bright red inside.

Try prolonged feeding using fresh macro-algae and/or make your own foods (search threads such as this one) and add lots of salmon skin.

maybe it's not clear... but all those foods I mentioned, Spirulina, krill, salmon skin... all have high levels of natural astaxanthin, so long as they are fresh & raw.

[eli@fijireefrock.com]

Originally Posted by Reef_Geek

maybe it's not clear... but all those foods I mentioned, Spirulina, krill, salmon skin... all have high levels of natural astaxanthin, so long as they are fresh & raw.

Actually I mix all you mentioned above and few other ingredients as some are fresh and some freeze dried to all my fish and a slight different recipe for my corals for few years now,some of the best coloration and health I seen

[asylumdown]

It was next to impossible to get a good picture of him with my fangled lights, but you can see how his face isn't jet black like some PBTs, the black on his tail is really washed out, and he's got practically no white framing his face. In fact it might not be that his face is any less black, it might just be the absence of bright white around it that makes it look that way.



Say compared to this photo I stole off the internet, which is what all the PBTs I saw in Ocean Creation recently looked like. I'm also now just noticing that my guy's fins on the bottom part of his body are the same colours as the fins on the top, whereas in other PBTs they're snow white.



Are those things that can change, or even affected by diet?

ETA: you can see my very preggers daddy Bangai cardinal in the background of the first pic!

[Reef_Geek]

Originally Posted by eli@fijireefrock.com

Actually I mix all you mentioned above and few other ingredients as some are fresh and some freeze dried to all my fish and a slight different recipe for my corals for few years now,some of the best coloration and health I seen

I don't have enough fish to justify making my own batches. Yet, I'm like many others, miss the Ocean Nutrition formulated gelatin foods. I wonder if there's any 'appetite' (get it? ha... ha... ) for LFS to make house blends for sale...

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by Reef_Geek

I don't have enough fish to justify making my own batches. Yet, I'm like many others, miss the Ocean Nutrition formulated gelatin foods. I wonder if there's any 'appetite' (get it? ha... ha... ) for LFS to make house blends for sale...

Miss Ocean Nutrition gelatine food? Did they stop selling it? I just picked some up a couple of weeks ago. Out of 21 fish, though, only 1 will eat it, my tang won't touch the stuff. I also picked up some of that reppashy stuff that allows you to make your own gel foods, but again, out of 21 fish, only 1 will eat it (but he eats everything, including plastic and sometimes coral).

[Reef_Geek]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

Miss Ocean Nutrition gelatine food? Did they stop selling it? I just picked some up a couple of weeks ago. Out of 21 fish, though, only 1 will eat it, my tang won't touch the stuff. I also picked up some of that reppashy stuff that allows you to make your own gel foods, but again, out of 21 fish, only 1 will eat it (but he eats everything, including plastic and sometimes coral).

I ran a whole broodstock operation with 500 tanks and over 100 species (clowns, gobies, dottybacks, blennies, angels, etc etc) using lots of formula one (and later, in-house blends). I even had anthias and lion fish trained on eating Formula 1. (Got them to spawn on it, but could not raise larvae).
http://www.oceannutrition.com/?page_id=58

it takes some time for the fish to get familiar with it. If given a choice, fish will take Artemia over everything else.

Where in Calgary did you find it? Ocean Nutrition ran into Canadian import issues for a while (as I believed).

[eli@fijireefrock.com]

Originally Posted by BlueTang<3

Feed it a good quality food, lots of vitamins or the colour enhancing stuff, typically as the fish ages the colours come in better as well but diet plays a large roll on looks.

there is a lot of vitamins and minerals for a better color and health on fish as they get it from the wild witch we do not have in our systems...best bet is mix your own food or find a good quality food.