# What is the best food to promote reds?



## Boldstone4 (Oct 23, 2012)

I have a tribe of red head tapajos and they are nearing the 2 inch mark (these little suckers grow VERY fast). They have their light blue sheen already. I can already see the orange/red developing, but I want to insure that it's the riches color possible.

What food should I invest in? I thought to do something rich in shrimp or krill.


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## JoeE (Jun 11, 2012)

I have a group of 11 of these guys as well, they're about to pass the 2 inch mark. I actually find them to be very slow growers, but they eat like little pigs. I leave the substrate covered in pellets every morning only to find it completely picked over when I get home from work. They are wonderful for the appearance of your tank - their constant agitation of the substrate stirs up detritus and really helps the mechanical filtration on your tank do its job.

I would think just about any healthy diet would color them up nicely. New Life Spectrum seems to be fed to a lot of show-quality fish, so that's what I use. You can get the Cichlid Formula very cheap from Amazon if you buy in bulk, but Thera+A or Grow might be better while they are small. But any of those three would be great foods, combined with weekly frozen foods like bloodworms or brine shrimp. Antarctic krill is the primary ingredient in the Cichlid formula (don't know about the others).

Incidentally, are your fish from Pete in Athens? If so, our fish are bros :thumb:


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## mok3t (Nov 28, 2008)

A prepared food with a decent color enhancer is enough TBH, even better with a frozen supplement. I've been feeding the fish at work with tetra pro colour and tetra prima, albeit because we get them free, but the colour is noticeably better. Especially the south americans. We dont have tapajos, we have altifrons and they're colouring up beautifully on a diet of prima and krill/mysis.


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## viejo (Dec 31, 2012)

The carotenoid pigments tend to oxidize rather rapidly & lose their potency, especially in dry foods. Frozen foods keep their effectiveness appreciably longer if kept tightly sealed in the freezer.


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## Boldstone4 (Oct 23, 2012)

YES JOE!!! I will inform my fish immediately about their siblings haha. I got mine in Nov, and they were much smaller than they are now.

Thanks for the suggestions. As of now they are on two varieties of pellets (one being Haikari Gold for color enhancement, the other a seafood supplement they love), cichlid sticks (tetra), algae wafers, and live/chopped earthworms. I feed them three times a day.


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## tylerh (Aug 29, 2012)

Paprika can be used to bring out the carotenoid (reds/oranges) pigments. If you feed dried worms, you can mix a tad of paprika in a enough water to dissolve it, then soak the freeze-dried food so it absorbs the paprika through the water. I've done it with various poison dart frogs before, and just recently started doing it for my cichlids. Mainly for my A. heckelii and altifrons, but I'm also about to get a trio of red heads


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## BelieveInBlue (Jul 17, 2011)

Apart from the usually bunch of prepared foods, I find that bloodworms usually help bring out the red colours in my fish, though I haven't tried that on red heads.


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## cprings (Sep 10, 2003)

Try Plankton Gold Flake. There are a few online vendors that sell it. My fish love it. I supplement NLS with it.


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