If anyone would know about color you would, Willie. That suggest, however, that any of the various color enhancing foods as somewhat akin to snake oil marketing.
TetraColor This natural color-enhancing food is a wonderful supplement to the diet of any tropical fish. Tropical Color Flakes promote beautiful color in all tropical fish and can be fed daily, alternating with Spirulina foods and treats. Enhanced with vitamin C and the patented health enhancing ProCare from TetraMin®.
BUG BITES™ are more than just insects. We’ve included other excellent protein sources like whole salmon, which is rich in Omega 3 and 6 for healthy skin, scales, fins and colors. Note: salmon. The foods that salmon eat are what generates the red flesh in the fish.
Vibra Bites® Another Hikari® world first, a blood-worm-like stick that offers outstanding nutrition and color enhancing capacity you have to see to believe. An outstanding addition to any daily feeding plan, this uniquely formulated diet will offer growth and immune system support too!
AguticSuppliers Now we are proud to offer a formulation designed to help bring out the Reds and Orange colors of your fish..Our "Bio-Pigment Plus" is a blend of Freeze Dried Australian Blackworms, baby Spinach, Spirulina, and Carophyl Pink. An excellent COLOR ENHANCER FOR REDS AND ORANGES in Fish. Not suited for light colored, albino or yellow fish as it may affect their color. (I purposely feed the bio pigment plus to an Albino millennium Gold discus which is a lemon drop yellow color to change its color to butterscotch. It is a very nice looking fish.
Omega one is one of the best brands of premium fish food with whole salmon in flakes as the top ingredient. Omega’s super color flakes are good color boosters and are nutritionally balanced with enhancements in the form of elevated beta carotenes derived from salmon skin.
Yellow and Red shades are the two colors most effectively influenced by color enhancing foods, which utilize the chromatophores. However, protein and foods such as seaweed can also work hand & hand with the chromatophores to produce brilliant blues, purples and greens in fish. For example, Flamingo feathers aren’t naturally pink, but get that way from accumulating carotenoids in the crustaceans and algae that the flamingoes eat. In zoos, flamingos are given feed with a carotenoid (canthaxanthin) in it to keep up their color. Carotenoids range from red, to orange to yellow. Most commercial color formulas contain astaxanthin, a red carotenoid that can bring out red color.
A series of experiments by researchers at Hawaii’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources showed that adding the bacteria, Haematococcus pluvialis, which contains astaxanthin and other carotenoids, to fish foodd worked to intensified the colors of red velvet swordtails, topaz cichlids, forktail rainbowfish, and, to a lesser degree, 24K mollies and kissing gouramis. Discus breeders often add paprika to their home-made discus food recipies. Paprika, is made from a ground, dried pepper, Capsicum annuum. Paprika is rich in a number of carotenoids, including beta carotene, capsanthin and capsorubin.
to Willie's point there is a challenge in replicating the natural color of fish, with some having faded shades.Only foods enhanced with carotenoids have performed effectively and consistently with respect to improving a fish's coloration.