Live food = Beautiful Fish

[fish_4_all]

I have recently realized that what I thought was a disease that my favorite neon swords looked like they had was nothing more than their natural coloring coming to the surface.

What triggered this sudden display of beauty? Frozen blood worms! Their tails now have a patch on the first 1/3 to 1/2 of their tail that is a beautiful irridescent scale pattern that just gets brighter every day.

I think it would be nice for others to see the benefits of live and frozen foods and the effect they have on tropical fish colors. Although I do not have any pictures yet, I will post them of my beautiful swords and brilliantly colored C. trilineatus as soon as I have them.

Post your fish pictures here, fed live or frozen or just flake foods for everyone to see the colors they could have if they added just a little live or frozen food to their fishy friends diet.

Include thier diet whether fresh, frozen, flake or other. What type of fish, be as specific as possible, I know I have to do a lot research for scientific names so common names would help also. Also, post any changes you see in your fish when you start using live or frozen foods.

[Fishyfanatic]

Are the fish relatively new to the tank? I know from experience that sometimes a fish will come home from the lfs one color, and will change colors once it is happy in a different, less crowded tank. In fact, my sister in law just took home a Snow White that was pearl white. The next morning he started showing a tint of blue. Now he is a pale pearl blue.

[frog girl]

Hey fish I grew up right near you.

Anyway to the topic. I ran out of frozen mosquito larvae but will keep notes on coloration this summer when live food is available again. My fish sure seem to prefer it when it is available. In fact any variation from flakes causes a stir. Bits of earthworm, smashed snails, even peas. Last year I froze up little vials with cooked & skinned peas & mosquito larvae for the winter & they worked really well. My fish also seem to love moths or any soft bodied insect that happens into the aquarium.

Most of the color changes I have noticed have do do with social interactions & dominance but then I have mostly been observing tiger barbs so I guess that is not too shocking.

[frog girl]

Hey fish I grew up right near you.

Anyway to the topic. I ran out of frozen mosquito larvae but will keep notes on coloration this summer when live food is available again. My fish sure seem to prefer it when it is available. In fact any variation from flakes causes a stir. Bits of earthworm, smashed snails, even peas. Last year I froze up little vials with cooked & skinned peas & mosquito larvae for the winter & they worked really well. My fish also seem to love moths or any soft bodied insect that happens into the aquarium.

Most of the color changes I have noticed have do do with social interactions & dominance but then I have mostly been observing tiger barbs so I guess that is not too shocking.

[fish_4_all]

The swords are the original inhabitants of the tank, more than 4 months now. They were put in there as soon as my tank had cycled and they have been happy since. I just recently put in some small C. trilineatus but the color changes happened 4 days before that. It happened over night basically because I spend a lot of time inspecting them every morning. Thought it was a disease but they are happier and livelier than they ever have been.

The only other thing could be the use of fluorescent light at times but the coloration showed up 3 days after I took it away and didn't change much except it was easier to see when I put it back on 3 days ago. Took it away yesterday, it serves as a light for my plants in my bedroom also, so I will see if their colors diminish over the next couple days.

[TomK2]

I had Platies for a few months. Then I started feeding tubifex and bloodworms more regularly. One day a pregnant one I was watching had intensified in color to the point I wasn't sure it was the same fish. I thought it was the pregnancy, then over a week or so all the platies intensified their red colors, even the males. Thats when I make the connection between the foods and the color. Now I try to give the worm foods often.

[fish_4_all]

Now if someone will direct me to where I can fingure out how to add pictures or just tell me how I will post my fishies and their color changes.

[TomK2]

take the photo, must be jpeg. crop it. then resize the picutre to 800 X 600 pixels for a post in a thread, 1024 X 768 for an upload to your gallery.
To get them in a thread, choose the reply buttton (not the quick reply screen). towards the bottom it will say add a file or attachment. use browse to find it on your hard drive. attach it. then submit. If it is an acceptable size, it will upload. if not, you get bumped to the file attachment too large screen. for gallelry pics, there is a time when its not viewable, since it must be reviewed for unacceptable content. Guess they figure that unacceptable thread content will be reported by the readers.

[fish_4_all]

Well I hope this works. If it does, here is my beautiful neon sword female. Notice the color change in the first 1/3 to 1/2 of her tail. This is where the irridescent scale pattern is and it is getting more reflective every day.

Can't wait to see how here color changes when they start getting whiteworms and grindal worms.

[fish_4_all]

This is a slightly better picture of the neon as well as a good one of my scarlett. When I got them from lfs, they were chosen because that is what they had. Very little color, no red in the neon, light red in the scarlett and lighter fins. They are now so brilliant and beautiful that I would buy them over anything my lfs carries, even the pretty platties. But then again, if I get the pretty platties and feed them this well then they should be show room quality in about 2 months.

whats a platy?

never had them and those neons are immense(from the picture)

[fish_4_all]

Platties, kind of like swords but puggier and no sword tail.

The neon is a neon sword. Both of my females are huge! Both of them are right at 2.5 inches and always huge with babies. One of the draw backs of live food is seeming to be lots of, 25-80, and lots of baby swords to deal with about every 3 weeks. Anyone need some really cheap

[Billsgate]

I've also had great succes with a varied diet. I feed my fish 2 types of flake food; spirulina+plankton tabs, frozen blood worms, and sometimes I buy a multipack of frozen foods. My fish do prefer the frozen foods, but I think variety is the most important thing (and healthy feeding schedule offcourse).
See my avater. It's my male keyhole cichlid. Now compare him to other pics you'll find on the internet. Mine is prettier :P

[fish_4_all]

Well my flake food is a mixture of every food I have recieved in the last 8 months from kits, samples and everything elese. I also add some crushed shrimp pellets. All of my flakes are also crushed, it just seems to work better. I also give them wafer tablets once in a while as well as frozen blood worms, microworms now and soon to have whiteworms, grindal worms and live brine shrimp. I have vinegar eels but I think they are way too small so they will be an adventure if I use them. Microworms are so easy to culture and even my largest swords gulp them before I ever see one hit the bottom. Bad thing for my corys but good for the tank.

Variety is absolutely the key to healthy and beautiful fish. Don't trust that one type of food will ever be enough to provide fish with what they need.

www.brineshrimpdirect.com They have a really good food, or at least it sounds like it should be, that is a mix of all their foods. * Brine Shrimp Flake * Spirulina & Kelp Flake * Tropical Flake * Plankton Gold . Sounds like a really good flake to me. They also have what might be the best prices I have ever seen for brine shrimp eggs and decapsulated brine shrimp. The food prices are a lot lower than I have seen also.