Tetra Discus/ angels

Would like your thoughts on this before I buy if you can, it's mainly to bring the colour out of my koi's, having said that, they are looking really good http://www.tetra.net/de/en/tropische-fische/futter/spezial-futter/tetra-discus

Tetra foods are always excellent, although personally I prefer feeding flake to Prima/Tetra Discus.
According to Steve from Angels plus (for those who don't know him, Steve is a highly regarded American breeder of angels, and in particular Koi), the orange/red colouration seen in koi is due to the storage of carotinoids. Angels don't manufacture carotinoids, and instead absorb it from their diet. Most foods contain some carotinoids, but some have particularly high levels, these include Cyclop-eeze and most colour enhancing foods. Google "carotenoids fish food" and you'll find a whole range of foods, and most of these will make a difference to your koi. There is an argument that you shouldn't colour feed fish, or at the very least, if selling a colour fed fish, that you should ensure that anyone buying it is made aware of the need for a colour enhancing diet. In the case of carotinoids, since they are naturally occurring chemicals found in most vegetable matter to some degree, the question is, "When does providing a well balance diet become excessive artificial colour enhancement?"

Thanks Rob, I will carry on as before, Flake, pellets and bloodworm, sorry for the blurred pic, I did make it smaller and in focus but it came out like this

Pterophyllum wrote:Tetra foods are always excellent, although personally I prefer feeding flake to Prima/Tetra Discus.
According to Steve from Angels plus (for those who don't know him, Steve is a highly regarded American breeder of angels, and in particular Koi), the orange/red colouration seen in koi is due to the storage of carotinoids. Angels don't manufacture carotinoids, and instead absorb it from their diet. Most foods contain some carotinoids, but some have particularly high levels, these include Cyclop-eeze and most colour enhancing foods. Google "carotenoids fish food" and you'll find a whole range of foods, and most of these will make a difference to your koi. There is an argument that you shouldn't colour feed fish, or at the very least, if selling a colour fed fish, that you should ensure that anyone buying it is made aware of the need for a colour enhancing diet. In the case of carotinoids, since they are naturally occurring chemicals found in most vegetable matter to some degree, the question is, "When does providing a well balance diet become excessive artificial colour enhancement?"  

Very emotive subject this and I for one think that there is a balance to be had as you may be aware I have kept and bred Discus for lots of Years and the Orange based fish are ones where you need to enhance their colour or they look washed out. I use Paprika in my beef heart mix that truly brings out the Orange colour in the fish, feed it to Yellow fish and hey they turn Orange. So my personal thoughts are as long as the buy is aware then there are no issues.

Simon Marshall wrote:

Pterophyllum wrote:Tetra foods are always excellent, although personally I prefer feeding flake to Prima/Tetra Discus.
According to Steve from Angels plus (for those who don't know him, Steve is a highly regarded American breeder of angels, and in particular Koi), the orange/red colouration seen in koi is due to the storage of carotinoids. Angels don't manufacture carotinoids, and instead absorb it from their diet. Most foods contain some carotinoids, but some have particularly high levels, these include Cyclop-eeze and most colour enhancing foods. Google "carotenoids fish food" and you'll find a whole range of foods, and most of these will make a difference to your koi. There is an argument that you shouldn't colour feed fish, or at the very least, if selling a colour fed fish, that you should ensure that anyone buying it is made aware of the need for a colour enhancing diet. In the case of carotinoids, since they are naturally occurring chemicals found in most vegetable matter to some degree, the question is, "When does providing a well balance diet become excessive artificial colour enhancement?"  

Very emotive subject this and I for one think that there is a balance to be had as you may be aware I have kept and bred Discus for lots of Years and the Orange based fish are ones where you need to enhance their colour or they look washed out. I use Paprika in my beef heart mix that truly brings out the Orange colour in the fish, feed it to Yellow fish and hey they turn Orange. So my personal thoughts are as long as the buy is aware then there are no issues.

So you make your own food up Simon, you must have quite a few tanks then? have you looked at my link? what's "your" thoughts on it..........

Tetra do some great food and I still feed mine Prima, their food products are great quality

I use Tetra Prima for my discus and angels. I recently bought a large tub of what I thought was Prima but when it came it said Tetra Discus. It looks the same, but I am not sure about its colour enhancing properties. I didnt realise I might be making my yellow discus orange.

As far as koi angels are concerned, is there sufficient carotenoids in the Prima, or should I buy another food with caretenoids in such as the JBL Novo Colour or something else? I am a bit confused about the whole colour enhancing foods thing and would like just a simple recommendation please.

I recently bought a large tub of what I thought was Prima but when it came it said Tetra Discus.

It's the same stuff. Being an international company, Tetra produce packaging for their different markets, in the UK Prima is called Prima, but in Europe it's called Tetra Discus. Because they don't sell enough of of the larger tubs to justify UK only packaging, for the larger size we get the European packaging. You'll notice that the big pack is multilingual, whilst the smaller packs of Prima are only printed in English.

As far as koi angels are concerned, is there sufficient carotenoids in the Prima, or should I buy another food with caretenoids in such as the JBL Novo Colour or something else? I am a bit confused about the whole colour enhancing foods thing and would like just a simple recommendation please.

Most/all foods contain some caretenoids, but some have more than others. The more caretenoids you feed, the more gold/orange/red the fish will express, provided they have the necessary genes to enable them to use/store it. In general I feed tetramin, and feel that has sufficient caretenoids for reasonable expression. However, having won some colour enhancing flakes, I've been experimenting with them and feel that they do make a difference. Adding a small amount of paprika or if you prefer cyclops (eg cyclop-eeze) will greatly enhance the carotenoid content of any food.

I don't consider feeding natural colour enhancing foods unethical, providing the buyer is made aware that the colour will fade unless the diet is maintained. But in general I prefer not to feed a colour enhancing diet, so that issue does not arise.

Thanks again. Last month I had tried some of these California blackworm cubes. The discus wont touch them but the angels eat them well enough, but I get through a lot of Tetra Prima as everyone is happy to accept that. I also keep Tetra min in stock. When I have fry and they have finished with the brine shrimp I like a good quality flake to crush and Tetra min seems to be the one. What I like about angels is they arent generally fussy eaters.