When I first bought my blood parrots from the petstore it was colored dark red, the next few days the color started turning pale. A few weeks later the first parrot was a orange color while the smaller one was a reddish orange in color. As of right now I feed them Hikari cichlid gold,Hikari discus red color enhancer and frozen krill. What might have caused my blood parrots color to fade?
purple blood parrot
- Thread starter chinaman
- Start date
Some stores will feed there fish hormone enhanced foods so the fish look more attractive to possible customers. Then when you take them home and their not getting those hormones anymore there color will fade, showing there true coloration. The easiest color to enhance this way happens to be red
What is your sourse on this. I've never even heard of "hormone containing food". Color Enhancing food maybe, but that's just because it contains carotin (same stuff you find in shrimp). There's nothing wrong with it.
Mooman, it is very common for fish to be fed foods that contain hormones to enhance the color. It very common with africans, however many pet stores dont actually feed these foods themselves, they buy fish that have been fed hormones previously.
I've seen tanks of 1" Scienochromis fryeri at Big Als FULLY colored up... bluer than adult specimens. Both males AND females were fully colored up, blue with white/yellow blazes. Obviously these fish were fed hormones to enhance thier color and thus get them to sell better. After a few weeks of being fed normal foods thier colors will disappear and the fish will become normal coloration.
In your case chinaman, your blood parrots sound like they were dyed. Its a terrible practice and its unfortunate you weren't informed of this when you bought your fish. While feeding good foods may bring the colors back slightly, the dyed colors will fade and not come back.
-Diana
I've seen tanks of 1" Scienochromis fryeri at Big Als FULLY colored up... bluer than adult specimens. Both males AND females were fully colored up, blue with white/yellow blazes. Obviously these fish were fed hormones to enhance thier color and thus get them to sell better. After a few weeks of being fed normal foods thier colors will disappear and the fish will become normal coloration.
In your case chinaman, your blood parrots sound like they were dyed. Its a terrible practice and its unfortunate you weren't informed of this when you bought your fish. While feeding good foods may bring the colors back slightly, the dyed colors will fade and not come back.
-Diana
They color them up by using an array of different methods...using MT, Carophyll Pink, Red, Yellow, CR6, normal astaxanthin, and a few other hormoned based treatments. It is very common practice for coloring the fish to happen because color sells...if its dull looking, it wont sell in the LFS. People buy color. Put a AAA grade Brown discus in the same tank with a B grade hormoned PB based discus for a higher price...which one would sell first?? The hormoned PB discus of course!! It is super colorful and attractive. Even if it'll die in a few months time, it'll still sell. And thats the name of the game actually...especially with discus. A lot of brokers hormone the discus they sell so that the fish wont survive to live to adulthood, or if they do, arent able to breed. This is their way of controlling the market. They cant sell a few discus and then a year later have more competition with that same person breeding those fish! It'll kill their business. So, they color them up to make a fast sale to newbies for a good price...only to have them turn dark, and die a few weeks/months later. Broker will just claim that it is the customers fault with not maintaining the tank or doing enough water changes to keep them healthy. That is the #1 reason why discus have been known to be so hard to keep...because of past bad experiences with inferior quality fish from brokers/exporters who hormone their fish. Now a days, there are many more exporters out there coloring the fish with safe products like natural astaxanthin or carophyll pink that will not hurt them and will still let them breed. Unfortunetly, discus have been stuck with that past myth and will stay with it as long as people remain uneducated and unwilling to learn by trying discus again and seeing for themselves they really arent that hard as long as a few basic requirements are met. But as far as using coloring agents on tropical fish in general...they have to, so they can sell at a younger age and be able to make some amount of money with colorful fish.
-Ryan
-Ryan