Based on my own limited experience, the RGD is very red, and the color does not fade.
When she came at 3.5'', it's almost pale white, but as she grows and matures, the red color becomes more and more intense. I have only fed her with NatuRose for a couple of weeks when she was young, and then I stopped it because the red color that the Naturose gives is not the way I want. Afterwards I just fed her with meat mix with shrimp and tetrabits, and the red color is well-developed. In the recent month, I stopped all kinds of food for red color enhancing, like shrimp&tetrabit, and only fed my fish with beef/tuna/salmon mix and blood worms, because I want to see if her face color can return from yellow to white if I don't feed her with red. The white face hasn't come back yet so far, but the red color on the body is well maintained.
Red color is sex linked, and usually female show more red than male (I feel lucky as I got a female RGD
). Also I heard albino red need a lot of color enhancer to keep the red color. Quality brown-based red fish like rose red and San Merah also have very intense red color, but again it depends on the gender, and it is kind of dark.
HTH
-Xiaofei