For you Blue Discus Owners..

[greyhoundfan]

What do you feed your blues? I'm referring to the dry food variety. I'm avoiding dry foods with betacarotene, carophyl pink (sp) and Astaxanthin . I don't want to bring out any red coloring on my blues. All the dry foods I've come across; pellets, and flakes at my LFS all have at least one of the ingredients I mentioned above.

[Condor]

Sera makes a food for blue discus. I have used it, but not long enough to tell if it had any effects or not.

Adrian

[brewmaster15]

Hi Reid,
What you are trying to do with diet is not easy...Orange and red pigments are in most foods... Pretty much any food with vegetable matter is going to have those pigments....for example... spirulina....even though physically its green in color...it is actually a great source of orange pigments.:)

Blue in discus can be lessened by too much reds and oranges .but I think the levels that are too much can be avoided if you feed a good wide variety of foods...and avoid adding additional pigments of red to things like beefheart., JMO

-al

[poconogal]

My BD eats Tetra Color Bits, and every other food that is supposed to enhance reds. She's still a beautiful blue. I've seen no effects on her from red enhancing foods.

I do have the food by Sera specifically for Blue Discus, but she hates it. The red and orange Discus that I have love the Blue Discus food, however... :p

[brewmaster15]

Connie,
If you look at the tail of a blue diamond given excessive reds as in feeding red color foods daily...the tails take on a yellowish appearance and the blues become a darker blue vs a metallic blue.. not necessarily a bad thing and looking at the two side by side may be the only time you'd notice...at least thats my experience.

hth,
al

[poconogal]

Well, hmmm, she does have a very slight yellow tinge to her tail, but she is a light, metallic blue, still, and I've got her for 11 mos. now (but have no other to view her against). Since she's in with all the other colors though, nothing I can do about her eating the Bits... LOL!! I've told her to eat the blue food, but she does not listen! She also eats Anubias leaves and the BNs algae wafers. I never have a single new leaf opening that's unmolested, Al... :D

[alpine]

Reid, I have some Blues (my favorite discus) and have gone through what you are asking about. I have found myself feeding a good variety of quality foods and not worrying about any one specialty foods for blue color fish , most likely they will not eat that food. I have never tried the Sera food. I bought an expensive food at the ACA last year for blue fish and my fish never ate it, it was an expensive product.
The only thing I would like to eliminate from my Blue fish is the yellowish tint close to the tail.

roberto.

[sublevel007]

I agree with poconogal as my bd eats everything in site and never has lost any blue color

[Kindredspirit]

Neither has mine:) BUT ~ she does have that little bit of orange around her mouth and tail....from the color bits ~

[greyhoundfan]

As Al and others mentioned its almost impossible to ellimante red color enhanced foods.. most dry stuff will have betacarotene (i slaughtered spelling on that one..:o )

I'm following advice here and feed a good variety of food.

[accessj]

I'm using the Sera for blue discus. I have a BD (Hans) , 7 Emerald Green Saphires (Deem) & 2 purple Knights (Deem).

They love the Sera food. The oldest fish (the BD) is a an intense blue. The purple knights got orange spots when i was feeding foods with Astaxanthin. Now that i just use...bloodworms, beefhearts, ,and sera for blue - the orange spots have faded.

[Condor]

Connie,
If you look at the tail of a blue diamond given excessive reds as in feeding red color foods daily...the tails take on a yellowish appearance and the blues become a darker blue vs a metallic blue.. not necessarily a bad thing and looking at the two side by side may be the only time you'd notice...at least thats my experience.

hth,
al

Al, here's an example of what you mentioned. Read this and took a look at my fish and sure enough lol... Check out the fins, you can see them get more yellow as they get older.

http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showthread.php?t=57439