# Colour (Color) Enhancing Cichlid Pellets (food)



## Notrevo

Forum, what is your experience with these types of foods? Do you believe the claims...do you trust your eyes...seen any reasonable experiments to support the claims? I imagine the manaufactureres are not just...er....blowing smoke, but what are your thoughts ad experiences?

Secondly, in my efforts to purchase a quality pellet (read more/most popular) Omega One/Hikari/NLS that is labelled as colour enhanced, I cannot find any with a large pellet. Most of the cichlids I keep (except the Neets) get to a large enough size that mini/small and even medium size pellets are not big enough. One would have to put so much into the aquarium at once to feed the fish. Larger pellets would allow for fewer pellets to be introduced. Then of course the argument is a few smaller pellets may equal one larger one. Am I just not finding the "large" pellets with colour enhancer out there (Cichlid Bio-Gold, Super Colour Enhancer, Color Supreme/Color FX).

Thoughts? Sorry for the rant...a tad frustrated this morning.


----------



## xxbenjamminxx

http://all-aquatics.com/store/item/s0af ... _6_oz.html

Here is the NLS 3 mm pellet with color enhancing stuff and they make a larger one that I beleive is like 7.5 mm. Now thats a big pellet! lol

As far as the claims, I personally believe I have seen more color, better growth, and overall healthier fish since I have started them on NLS pellets and the HBH Flake food. JMO tho.


----------



## mccluggen

I have had nothing but good experiences with Dainichi foods, but as with anything of this type, you get what you pay for. You pay a premium price for premium foods, but I can say that they do work.

I have found that my experience in buying dog food for the danes has translated well to fish food. In general, when looking at the ingredients list, it is best to avoid food that lists corn as one of the first ingredients. It's just filler and has about the same nutritional value as styrofoam. You also should look at the names of the protein sources. In general if the proteins have a "non-generic" name they are from better sources. "fish meal" is generic while "white fish meal", "earthworm meal", or "salmon meal" is likely to be from a better source.

Also, for color enhancers, the primary color enhancer for red and warmer colors is astaxanthin, which comes from things like krill (and similar crustaceans) and haematococcus algae. To enhance cool colors like blue you want something rich in spirulina.

As for the size of the pellet it is less important for large fish than it is for small (who physically can't eat a large pellet). My 14 inch oscar used to happily slurp up a handful of the 3.5mm medium sized pellets.


----------



## smitty

I have always been under the belief that if you have your fish on a good diet. There environment is well kept any color difference from so call color enhancing foods is minimal. I feed my fish 14 different foods consisting of 2 brand. 13 of the foods are HBH. The one other is Tetra Jumbo Min. I do think they will color up better on the krill, mysis, plankton, bloodworms freeze dried or frozen. Better than color enhancing pellets and flakes.


----------



## Chunkanese

I started feeding NLS back in feb/march. Bought a large container for $36, *** been feeding on a heavily stocked 125 and have used only about 15-20%. This quality food lasts much longer as you dont need to overfeed. Also my taiwan reef hap went from a little silver fish to a fully coloured male about twice more so than the even larger males at the LFS. I believe the hype.


----------



## DnJ90

*** been usein NLS for a while now and it seems to be a great food and all the fish do great on it.


----------



## dinuma

I've been using NLS 1 mm pellets for my cichlids for about a month and a half now. There is a significant growth over that when I was primarily feeding Tetra bits. I cant comment so much on color since the fish are still still about 2-3 inches and immature and the color I assume develops as the fish grow from this point on.

This is my feeding schedule as of now: every morning NLS; Mon, Wed, Thurs evenings tetra bits; Tues, Thurs, Fri evenings home made food with fish, shrimps, squid, spinach, radish leaves, spirulina, garlic, green & red chilly, pepper, salt, Vitamin complex, gelatin (European mix); Sunday evening live blood worms or tubifex worms or thread worms or earth worms (whatever I can get in the market)

I'm happy with the color and growth patterns & activity levels of the fish


----------



## zuesana

I've been using NLS for a while now, I love it. had friends that had the same fish I did, took them like 2 years to get the color I was getting in like...3 months. My fish love it too, its not the cheapest but I think its def worth it.


----------



## electriccichlid

i use cichlid gold by hikari and they offer baby, small, medium , and large and i have every size haha i though i need large but needed mediums thought i needed small needed baby lol


----------

