Coloring up?

[KryptiCouple]

About how long will it take for Mbunas to come into their color? We have 2 species in our tank who still haven't come into their colors yet. The white top afras and afra cobue. One of our white tops has, but so far the rest haven't, and none of our cobue have yet. Yellow tails, demasoni, and labs, are all coloring up nicely, though. We've had them for about 2 months now, and they were between 1-2" when we got them.

 

[Andrew McFadden]

My afra had color when I got it at about 2". It did change a lot for about 4 months after that.

 

[MagicAfra]

I think my cynotilapia afra color up at around 2 inches but you cant tell that much since they're highly subdominant at that point. The 1-1.5 inch ones often even fade so you can't see their stripes. At about two inches they definitely start taking on a little bit purple, I have a couple at 2.5 dark purplish blue, and two dominant light blue white the father and a son. I think the reason many of these are not brighter is because I have 25-30 afra.

 

[KryptiCouple]

Gotcha. So since one of our white tops has colored up pretty well, the others may not color up much at all, even the cobue?

 

[Andrew McFadden]

True the dominate one will show better color

 

[KryptiCouple]

True the dominate one will show better color

Well our other guys haven't come into really any sort of color, they're all a very dark blue almost brownish color, except for that one white top. Oh well...? Lol