Goldfish Coloring

[badkitty4x4]

Hi everyone, came across this board in my search for answers. I have a medium size pond I built in my back yard that I stocked with 2 small koi and 4 goldfish. Both koi have grown being growing wonderfully and the goldfish have breed and given 12 additional beautiful fish.

Four of the goldfish have not yet developed color, they were born this past spring and have grown to about 2 inches give or take. At this time they are still a silvery black with no signs of gaining any color. I have brought them all in for the winter (I have some work to do on the pond this fall & spring) and placed them in a 55 gallon tank. They took to it very well and are thriving still so far, even the new babies. My question is, is there anything I should do to help the fish to gain their coloring? Do I need to have a UV type of bulb on the tank a little each day? I still think they are lovely and will enjoy them just the same, but they are very hard to see and enjoy while in the pond. Any suggestions or hints would be greatly appreciated! Thanks so much!

 

[kribensis12]

I would either wait for the color to appear, or feed them Spirulina. It will work wonders, fast.

 

[black angel]

I have two that survived a spawn last year and are still black...they stay in the pond over winter and are doing fine..i think putting them in the tank will give you problems in water quality especially with 4. hope you ahve powerful filtration and lots of media...leaving them in the pond over winter wont do them any harm.

 

[Colin_T]

Baby goldfish are bronze and many stay that way for their entire life. Others will change colour and go white, orange, black or any combination of these colours. If they haven’t changed colour after 6 months then they will likely stay bronze forever.
The tanks full of orange and white goldfish at the LFS are only a small percentage of goldfish bred and raised in Asia. Over half the young will remain bronze and these are often sold as feeder fish or just destroyed due to lack of colour.

 

[badkitty4x4]

Thanks for your help! They will be back in the pond all year again once it is finished with it's "make-over". I will see if more premium food will help, but I will enjoy them all anyway as they are a blast to watch in the pond and now the tank. Thanks again!

 

[Honeythorn]

Yep. The brownish bronze is their natural "wild" colour.

 

[ColdGold]

Goldfish can change colour at just about anytime and they can change more than once.

Most of them colour up in the first year but if they don't it doesn't mean they won't at some stage. The oldest I have heard of a natural coloured goldfish turning orange is 8yrs old.

I have 4 babies form last years spawn that are now almost a year old. One became orange by the time it was 1/2" long it is now changing form a bright light orange to a darker reddish orange and white. One is quite black but I expect it to turn orange or even orange and white - most goldfish with black loose it over time (melanophores tend to suffer a higher rate of cell death with out replacing themselves than do erythrophores (yellow) xanthophores (red)) except for shubunkins and really good black moors. One is a dark bronze / silver and the other is an orangey brown - they may or may not change (I don't really care one way or the other) only time will tell.

So you never know - they might colour up or they might not. It is very true that more than half of goldfish fry do not. Sometimes you can get pink albinos too.

Colour enhancing food won't help if the colour isn't there in the first place. Spirulina enhances colour it can't make your fish coloured if they don't have the chromatophores to make it coloured in the first place. I use colour enhancing (spirulina) food it has made no noticeable difference to my babies' colour.

 

[black angel]

since writing this one of my babies has turned a lovely bronze colour whilst the other is still jet black.