rainbows losing their colour???

[gradantanant]

hey all

I've started on my rainbow fish tank with 4 goyder river rainbows

they seem really happy but they just don't seem to be getting any colour.

I bought 2m and 2f and I've read that females stay rather colourless but when I bought the males they were already very red in the fins and body.

in the mornings they are fairly coloured not as much as at the lfs but still coloured. but by afternoon they are almost silver.

what can be causing this??
the other tank inhabitants are in my signature minus the rainbow shark which I gave away.

my tank is a low light and tech tank but still has a fair amount of crypts, ferns and moss.

I don't really have any plants that reach the top of the water so do rainbows like shade from the top of the tank???

tia
grant

[cinciboy]

I found out that my rainbows color are dark when there is no light and when I put the lights on in the morning they become pale.. may be somebody can explain this. IHTH

[LittlePuff]

Grad,

What are you feeding them?

Kim

[Apocalypse_Gold]

What colour is your substrate? Rainbows are more colorfull on dark backgrounds. How long have you had them? Maybe they haven't adjusted to your tank yet and are stressed.

[Zezmo]

rainbows change thier color a lot.... my Irian Red goes from brick red with an orange stripe, to a blackish silver color. It mostly depends on what he is doing.... eating, mating, resting...etc
His, and the colors of my other 4 rainbows change from minute to minute. I will say, eating daphnia realling brings out the colors.

[Mazdaman]

also rainbows take a full year to become fullt mature and untill then the color won't be fully mature either.

[cinciboy]

One of my rainbow. Male ?[/img]

[cinciboy]

female ?

[gradantanant]

thanks for all the replies

i have had my rainbows for about 2 months now they are wild caught from the NT (in Australia)

my gravel is the basic 3mm pebbles. the colours would be creamy

im looking into getting a large anubais plant and graft it onto a piece of driftwood. the anubais leaves would float on the surface would that provide shade for the rainbows and make their colours show more as they are proctected from the light for more of the day

im feeding them Tetra colour bits, frozen bloodworms, shrimp pellets, algae wafers, and Sera bits