Hormones or Color Enhancers

[NickK]

About a month back, I recieved my first discus and was told that they were definitely hormoned or seriously color enhanced. I just read an article about this, and it said the fish would quickly lose their bright colors if this was the case. The breeder claims nothing of that sort was used, and the discus look even better today. If they were hormoned or color fed, how long does it take before the colors fade?

[brewmaster15]

Hi Nick,
theres a big difference between hormones and color enhancers. Hormoned can lead to al kinds of problems, color enhanced is really just feeding them foods that are high in the natural pigments that the fish would deposit in the special cells on its skin. This pigments come from algae cells mostly, and from crustaceans, or are found as additives to foods ( :nutra Rose, tetrabits, hikari discus red)

I'm not an expert on hormones, but generally changes that occur from hormones will gradually tapper off. Unfortunately I have never seen any time tables.


sorry this isnt much help,
al