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super red zebra


charleyzheng

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to get that amount of colour in a normally yellow to orange fish there would need to be some sort of synthetic colour enhancers/ hormones or someone is very good on photoshop and saturated the subject with red without it affecting the background. i believe you couldnt get the colour just through line breeding.

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While I agree it could be due to lighting/hormones/photoshop, I read an interesting part on the site that is selling them that suggests they are line breeding them to bring out the red:

"There is a new variety developed by some Florida farmers called cherry red the males and females are a bright red."

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Looks like a edited picture?

Whether it is or not if you want colour like that feed them White Crane Super R. I wouldn't feed it as the sole diet, but 2-3 times per week will get them to that colour and avoid any side affects from feeding a craPPy quality food. Feed them a good quality staple diet like Spectrum/OSI/Hikari etc.

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I have been feeding my fish home made food - according to the european shrimp mix from cichlidforum.com

I actually add extra spirilina - though I know this is supposed to promote blue - i'm very happy with my saluosi and electric blues.

That white crane red is even more expensive than NLS - and for a tank of 40 fish, a one kilo bag won't last that long.

Has anyone tried buying asxanthin as an additive in their food and if it makes any difference?

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Looks like a edited picture?

I wouldn't feed it as the sole diet, but 2-3 times per week will get them to that colour and avoid any side affects from feeding a craPPy quality food. Feed them a good quality staple diet like Spectrum/OSI/Hikari etc.

The one side effect white crane won't avoid is messing with the fishes' hormones and turning your females into males. Don't use it, there are plenty of better natural options if you want to enhance your fishes colour.

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Another reason not to use it is that cichlids need to be able to turn on or off their colour depending on their position in the hierarchy of the tank. In the wild, the most dominant fish in that area are the most colourful.

But if you have a small peacock in the tank that is juiced up, he swims past a big peacock and the big peacock thinks "that little fish is too cocky, I'm going to smash him." Little fish would rather turn off his colour when going past the big fish but can't so gets smashed.

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The one side effect white crane won't avoid is messing with the fishes' hormones and turning your females into males. Don't use it, there are plenty of better natural options if you want to enhance your fishes colour.

Changes females to males ? First time I have heard this. Sounds like a bit of a wives tale.

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The one side effect white crane won't avoid is messing with the fishes' hormones and turning your females into males. Don't use it, there are plenty of better natural options if you want to enhance your fishes colour.

Changes females to males ? First time I have heard this. Sounds like a bit of a wives tale.

They won't literally grow male gonads and start producing sperm but they take on male colouration and stop breeding (possibly never to recover). Give any female enough male hormones (or vice versa) and the physiological changes to the endocrine and reproductive systems will be profound.

If you want to see a human example of this process have a look at female athletes or body builders that use steriods especially 1980s East German swimmers.

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this is true about white crane, do not use that crap! i learnt this the hard way purchasing 15 taiwan reefs from a shop i will not name who happened to pump their fish up with it and for 1 year my fish were confused not knowing which was male or female haha. however some who i suspect were females started turning into the silvery colours with some red markings left over on their anal fins but i gave up. natural spirulina is the way to go haha

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WC was originally produced for coloring Discus, but in african peacocks especially the food will mess with the female coloring up like males which confuses the hell out of them when it comes to breeding.

Was also used by breeders and some shops to color EB at 4cm except that is just unnatural and not good practice.

WC and similar foods also is why some imported so called male peacocks that come in from Asia all of a sudden start to lose their coloring and revert back to the female color that they are = simple wern't males in the first place.

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White crane contains no hormones or steroids - how would you expect customs to clear it the product if that were true? That's an old wives tale that has no basis. The food contains PSB (Photosynthetic bacteria) and Spirilina in high levels which brings out the colours. No "hormones" or "steroids"!

It is a horrible food quality wise but it's a sure way to achieve the best colours possible.

For a healthier alternative, add some astaxanthin into your food mix. It's an incredible antioxident but is a caratenoid that brings out the reds and yellows and fish but read up on amounts required as you can use too much.

Here's a response by a shop owner over west which I think pretty much sums up the truth behind white crane (Perhaps some advice as well for those who continue spreading lies/wives tales about the food).

Hi,

I hear a lot of stuff about the use of white crane foods - females turning male, sterility, shortened life etc. After seeing this stuff in use for the last 10 years or so I would have to say that I have never come across a case of any of the above outcomes & suspect most of it is imagined. Females do colour, but I have customers that have used it for years & the coloured up girls are still popping out the babies.

The thing to remember is that it is very difficult to get a food approved in Australia, it takes many months & tons of samples have to be provided to the food & drug admin for testing, for this reason it is pretty much impossible to mask hormones or steroids if present (if only imported foods for human consumption were so stringently tested).

I cannot find any mention of issues with the use of PSB's in fish food & if someone can enlighten me with a suitable bit of info I would appreciate it & will begin to advise against its use (not just anectdotal posts with someones opinion, real proof with references to the tests used). I do know that certain people & societies on the east coast were very close to getting their a#@Ss sued when first introduced because of publishing statements on white crane as having steroids/hormones present when it is not actually the case, so be a bit careful about what is stated without some form of reference to proof or another article.

I do not use it myself in the store for 2 main reasons - 1 is that it makes it to hard to select males & females when asked, 2 is that one of the greatest part of keeping cichlids is watching the range of colour changes that a fish will go through as it matures.

I think of white crane as a useful tool, if you have a small tank & want to see the colour of your cichlids before you have to get rid of them, use it, if you have a tank with heaps of fish, but only a couple are coloured due to dominance issues, the use it (pointless having a tank of 30 fish with only 3 in good colour), I also have a customer who seperates a couple of peacocks when he gets a new colony, feeds them the white crane & sees what the turn into, this has proved that a few species he has paid good money for were in fact not the fish he ordered, something he would not have discovered under normal circumstances for many months, too late to return.

There are vastly superior foods on the market, I am not a massive fan of the product & find it a bit dirty (I am also a bit suspect on the nutritional value), but also think there is a bit of a witch hunt on it as well as some 'snobbery' about something that gives awesome results without the normal skills attached to raising quality fish. To those people, an adult naturally coloured fish will always look superior to a w/c coloured specimen, less metallic & more subtle variety overall. I do not wish to get into any arguments over this, but would appreciate being further educated.

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Mcloughin2 is spot on. I have used the food on display fish and once stopped the females have lost there colour and had no problem breeding. It's not a staple diet but fed in small regular amounts it's great.

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