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Natural colour enhansing food


catcher

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Hi all,

What have people found gives the best results for good natural colouring.

Is there one specific food that gives noticable results or has someone found that a combination of foods worked?

cheers

Glenn

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Anything with Carotene in it, like carrot, is good for red colours. I've tried grated carrot and seen first hand the oranges, yellows and reds all come out in my fish within 24hrs.

I've heard the general rule of thumb with vegetable matter as colour food is whatever colour the veggie is the colour that'll be enhanced in the fish. But definitely give carrots a go.

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Tetra colour bits have a good concentrated amount of carrotine. Brine shrimp have carrotene also (not as much though). Most mixed type flake food will have some amount of carrotine in it as will do an ok job.

Anthony

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IMO, good quality dry/prepared foods will do just as good a job as anything else. I'm not going to plug specific brands as I don't want to rob any equally good brand of a mention.

Occasionally fresh or live foods have seemed to me to be good spawning triggers, but I have never noticed any marked difference in fish colour/behavior/health (except the aforementioned getting randy) in fish comparing fish fed exclusively prepared foods and fish supplemented with live/fresh/frozen food.

I think the spawn trigger is more related to a seasonal trigger. ie. lots of live bug larvae in the water column, time to get it on. I doubt it has anything to do with nutrition.

I also can't say feeding a specific colour enhancer (like 'bits') has any special benefit when the base diet is already of good quality.

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i use a combination of hikari floating pellets and tetra colorbits, but to be honest, i dont think they have a huge impact on coloration.

my fish seem to be the best colors when the males are randy as hell, and the girls the best colors when they are holding.

still looking for that elusive spawning trigger. a good water change did it for me the first time, but failed this time. maybe i should get some fresh brine shrimp

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  • 2 weeks later...

shelled peas (the other shell around the pea itself). They've made the blue in my Firemouths real nice, and has seemed to of had some effect on their red as well. But i'm having trouble feeding mine carrots. how do you do it? i've tried finely grated but they don't seem to like it?

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go to the library(or online) and look up iroage, the japanese have taken the colour enhancement of koi to an absolute art form ,which they call iroage, good koi books list all different food and what effect they have on different colours, although there is a general consensus that if a fish is well fed and kept in good conditions it will tend to show its best colour,incidently iroage translates in english "to dye red cloth"

i feed colour bits not so much for colour but because my fish love it and if you go to the action garden and aquarium at greenacre(next door to dick smiths) you can buy a 300g tub for $20 , ben at aoa also does a good price

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To be honest, I think $20 for a 300gm tub is expensive :-(

How can you feed the carots? I havent tried, but that got me thinking.

I got large fish in my tanks, and 300gms would go in a week. Even less!

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