First Blues

Well thanks to the very kind Paul, I have my first blues and lovely they are too!  

what type of lighting is best to show their colours off ? There's so much about today, I don't want to waste money on something that won't make much difference.

Also is there any food that will enhance them? not that they need much help lol they're brilliant looking fish.

I feel a new fishtank coming on...................... 

Congratulations on your new fish.
The blue colouration in blue angels is structural rather than resulting from pigments. The colour comes from the refraction and reflection of incident light by the skin surface. Other than feeding a good diet to keep the fish looking healthy, diet is unlikely to have much, if any, influence on how good the blue looks.
Much more critical is not so much which light, but where it is positioned, I just use fluorescent bulbs mounted above the tank, with one at least mounted towards the front, however my fish, and the particularly the paraibas, always look their best when daylight falls on the tank, A similar effect can be see with a good spotlight, eg halogen, shining towards the front glass. However it should be noted that too much of either will lead to excessive algal growth, and the fish don't look so good when you can't see them for algae!

Ahh so that's why I have a silver ghost that has blue ventrails? He doesn't have any blue genes, just displays some colouring??

When you say fluorescent tubes, I'm assuming using daylight bulbs?

I've got various tanks.....
I have a vision 260 which has two T5 Juwel bulbs (1 day, 1 nature I think), two of my newest tanks have a single juwel t5 daylight tube, most of the rest use Dennerle Trocal T8's (these are very yellow in colour, but give a good light for growing plants, and give a slight tannin water look, which I like). But the blues look good under any of these!

Ahh so that's why I have a silver ghost that has blue ventrails?

Indeed, the pb gene produces very blue fish, but lots of varieties have some blue in them, in particular, zebra & marbles, but even many wild fish can have quite a lot of blue, especially around the gills, and spreading on to the body in some cases.

Hi Linz,
I'm glade you are pleased with the fish & with there colour. The lighting on the tank they were in are T5s that came as standard on the tank which is an allpond solutions 330 litre & the tubes are 1 white & 1 red which as you could see show off the colouring very well. But on the tanks upstairs they only have 1 T8 grow lux tube each which I also feel show off the colouring in blue fish.
I don't use a colour feed on my blue's as I find tetra min is a good all in diet but I do feed varied frozen foods.

OK thanks for that Paul, I think they're going to get their own new tank very soon, so I'll sort the lighting

Both smokies seem to have their tubes showing today and there's a bit of bickering going on lol  

When you say bickering do you mean lip locking as thats normaly a sign of good things to come,plus as the female is larger than the male she will test him for vigor so as to make sure he is good enough to father her young.Thinking about it the 2 marbles could well be females too.

No just pushing and shoving, well maybe I have a tank full of females then.

OK an update......

The two smokies started cleaning leaves, both had tubes showing, a third fish was hanging about and not getting chased away, to my inexperienced eye, both tubes seemed to be the same. When I came back later, one of them started to lay eggs and the other two were either side picking them off straight away.

I've been desperately trying to see if there are any differences in the two, or if one of them looks like my known males, and I'm stumped lol, the one that wasn't laying eggs has a fatter belly so that was one theory blown lol.

I know they're young, is this possibly the behaviour of an inexperienced male or is it more likely to be another female? I'm sure Paul thought he was giving me a pair, and they are still hanging about together, and both tubes have more or less disappeared? I don't want to put them in a tank on their own if there's no point?

Hi Linz the larger of the 2 smokeys is a female the smaller one i thought was a male, but i may have been mistaken but pretty sure its a male, i did have 2 that looked very much alike & i may have given you the wrong 1 so i will have a good look again.If you have another tank you can put them in or have a tank you can divide it would be worth it as they will lay again soon & it will allow you to see for sure.They are young & this would be there 1st attempt.

OK Paul thanks, I'll keep an eye onthem

Well an update, the two smokies are both female, the first one I paired with a plain smokey I already had, they're in their own tank and I think they've put their wrigglers on the floor of the tank, will have to see what happens there............

The other blues are in their own tank, I wondered why there was a crowd of fish behind the filter.... have now spotted the other smokey has paired up with a blue marble (yippee a male!!!   ), shes laid a wonderful spawn on a leaf, I'm not expecting them to survive, but someone is going to have to vacate a tank so I can keep the next attempt! My husband has been very patient with me and my fish, but I think I'm pushing my luck with another tank!!! lol

I have a growing on tank in the kitchen which at some point I think I'm going to need to partition off, does anyone have a good way of doing this?

If you're just trying to keep two pairs separate then a sheet of acrylic cut marginally larger than the width of the tank will wedge in quite successfully, but babies will probably find their way past it.

good luck with the spawn