Am I dyeing my fish?

[acpart]

About 2 months ago I started feeding my fish "TetraColor Tropical crisps" that advertises "Natural color enhancer". Just recently I looked at the ingredients and saw that in contains in addition to carotenoids, yellow dye 5 and red dye 3. I have no problem using carotenoids to enhance fish color, but I don't know whether the red and yellow dyes are just coloring the food to make it look cool or whether it's affecting the fish. I'm breeding Indian flame barbs to neon rosy barbs in a 35 gallon tub/pond so I'm invested in getting redder fish, but not by dyeing them. Any ideas as to what effect the food is having?

Aliza

 

[tropicfishman]

nope its perfectly fine, its just coloring for the food. The process of actually dying a fish to enhance its looks involves injecting dye underneath the scales, smae principle as tattooing. But your doing absolutely NO harm to your fishies...good question though.

 

[acpart]

Thanks a lot. That means that my Indian flame barbs are doing a good job transmitting their red color to the neon rosy barbs.

Aliza

 

[tropicfishman]

no prob glad to help