More coloration chat…

[gwand]

There’s been multiple case studies in the medical literature of humans turning an orange hue from drinking too much carrot juice. That’s those carotenoids! if a fish is albino or has a light skin color and a reasonable amount of subcutaneous fat, fat-soluble dyes will change their color. This will work, not only with Carotenoids but with turmeric, beet extract among others.

 

[Magnum Man]

well I want Viking purple during football season... & I definitely have a layer of fat

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Fish colors do change for other reasons. I have worked with a number of pleco species, have kept clown loaches for over 2 decades and they are a perfect example of this. When they are stressed their colors fade. In addition fading the colors is a sign of submission in a fight. This has nothing to do with lighting or food. Further, as clown loaches get bigger, their colors become more dull/less bright.

And then their are the fish which chamge golor when in spawning mode. This is usually (but not always) the males as far as I have seen this in the fish I have kept.

Lastly, with plecos, they are hiders and often nocturnal feeders. At night there is no light visible to use in a tank. So, we do not see the plecos' color (or at all) because light is required for us to see these. I would assume that, to some extent the darkness also provides the plecos out at night from being easily seen by predators.

All of the above aside, colorful fish do get their colors from what they eat to a great extent. Color enhancing foods usually contain a decent amount of the things that contribute to producing those colors. The trick, of course, is to find which such foods have the better ingredients.

 

[Magnum Man]

I had a very Large Red Breasted Pacu, that I grew up, when I had tanks 20 years ago... I always fed him Gold Fish, & Hikari Cichlid Gold, color enhancing food, large pellets, he started out about baseball size, & went almost 24" before I lost him, knocking off a weighted tank cover... as he got bigger, I had to discontinue feeding him gold fish, he was like a big puppy in a kiddie pool, & gallons of water would go on the floor, while he chased them... as he continued to grow, the grey color took over, & his fins & tail lost their red color... I did some reading... ( ya know, back in books, before the www. ) & found out a major portion of their diet was roots, fruits, & seeds... I promptly plopped a carrot in the tank, but he wouldn't touch it... I trained him to eat them, by 1st dicing them up the size of the pellets... eventually he learned to eat whole carrots, chomping them like Bugs Bunny... a strange thing happened though, he started getting his color back, in his fins and tail... I wasn't really expecting to see a change, as he had pretty much grown up on the "red" pellets...

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I was likely the Beta Carotene which is in the carrots that contributed. Spirulina, cinnamon and Astaxanthin powder in the diet all help with color. I am sure there are moer than that, those are the things I know about.