Hikari VS Aqeon Golfish Food

[ichthius 122]

I am personally not a fan of the color enhancing foods, after I got some staining onto the white of my white fish.

me neither

Yet pro-gold is a color enhancing food:

"Pro-Gold is a sinking pellet that includes Krill, Fish, Shrimp, Wheat, Spirulina and Alfalfa as the main ingredients"

All the above ingredients are very high in carotenoids, color enhancing pigments.

Best fishes

David

www....................com

[dnalex 13,633]

I am personally not a fan of the color enhancing foods, after I got some staining onto the white of my white fish.

me neither

Yet pro-gold is a color enhancing food:

"Pro-Gold is a sinking pellet that includes Krill, Fish, Shrimp, Wheat, Spirulina and Alfalfa as the main ingredients"

All the above ingredients are very high in carotenoids, color enhancing pigments.

Best fishes

David

www....................com

Yet for some reason I have not gotten the staining that I saw with the Saki Purple bag. Most importantly, the reason why I continue to use it is because I can feed this to all of my fish without floaty issues. Several of my fish became extremely floaty with the purple bag. I was actually really disappointed, because I really wanted to use the purple bag.

[coco 27]

I am personally not a fan of the color enhancing foods, after I got some staining onto the white of my white fish.

me neither

Yet pro-gold is a color enhancing food:

"Pro-Gold is a sinking pellet that includes Krill, Fish, Shrimp, Wheat, Spirulina and Alfalfa as the main ingredients"

All the above ingredients are very high in carotenoids, color enhancing pigments.

Best fishes

David

www....................com

Yet for some reason I have not gotten the staining that I saw with the Saki Purple bag. Most importantly, the reason why I continue to use it is because I can feed this to all of my fish without floaty issues. Several of my fish became extremely floaty with the purple bag. I was actually really disappointed, because I really wanted to use the purple bag.

never used pro-gold b4, but i too was disappointed with the saki purple bag, another £9 down the drain.......

[ichthius 122]

PS if food turns a white fish yellow, it's not a white fish but rather a nutritionally deprived yellow fish!

[dnalex 13,633]

PS if food turns a white fish yellow, it's not a white fish but rather a nutritionally deprived yellow fish!

Does your logic also extend to babies who eat food with a lot of beta-carotene and then turning orange? I guess they are just nutrionally deprived orange babies. Interesting!

As for the purple bag, if they turn my white fish yellow, I would actually love that, since I love yellow goldfish. Unfortunately, as I wrote up above, I got staining at the border of white and other colors (red/orange). Supposedly Hikari is coming out with another version of the purple bag that addresses this issue, but other than a few postings I've seen, there has been nothing else that can verify this rumor.

Edited March 14, 2012 by dnalex

[MexiMike83 96]

I like pie....

Edited March 14, 2012 by MexiMike83

[MexiMike83 96]

PS if food turns a white fish yellow, it's not a white fish but rather a nutritionally deprived yellow fish!

Does your logic also extend to babies who eat food who with a lot of beta-carotene and then turning orange? I guess they are just nutrionally deprived orange babies. Interesting!

Hey, be nice.

[dnalex 13,633]

PS if food turns a white fish yellow, it's not a white fish but rather a nutritionally deprived yellow fish!

Does your logic also extend to babies who eat food who with a lot of beta-carotene and then turning orange? I guess they are just nutrionally deprived orange babies. Interesting!

Hey, be nice.

What are you talking about, Mike? I am asking David to explain his statement. I actually respect his opinions quite a lot, and would like to understand this curious statement. Thanks.

Edited March 14, 2012 by dnalex

[ichthius 122]

Fish and mammalian skin are very different. My highschool biology teacher often spoke of her orange brother who was fed lots of beta carotene due to an eye problem...

Most pigment cells (chromatophore) in fish are modified never cells which store environmentally obtained pigments. They are under control of the fish to expand and contract to change the fish's color depending on habitat or social situation. A fish needs to have functional chromatophore to express environmentally obtained pigments. Xanthophores are needed to express yellow pigment, or erythrophores to express red/orange. Most chromatophore, only grow during embryonic development from the neural crest so once they are gone, they are gone. Goldfish have many gene pathways that kill these cells as part of their natural decoloring process from juvenile to adult coloration. If you have a gene that kills each cell type, the result is a white fish which may have been several different colors over its life span but once the genetic cards have been dealt, you're left with white fish. Panda goldfish are a black fish that is partially decolored and will become white.

If a fish is truely white a gene has atrophied/killed the various chromatophore so it can not express that color. Similarly once a melanophore is dead a fish won't have any black. Melanin is however produced by the body unlike the environmental pigments which are obtained through diet.

Once the xanthophores are gone, the fish will not express yellow no matter how many Xanthophylls you feed it. If you raise stocks of red/white or white fish some fish out in the ponds or on high pigment feed, some will take on a yellow hue from the algae/food they are eating. These fish have not lost their xanthophores. Their siblings that stay white have lost these cells.

DNAlex, how long were you on the debate team?

Edited March 14, 2012 by Ichthius

[dnalex 13,633]

Haha. Thank you for that explanation. I have always found your knowledge of goldfish biology impressive, and take every opportunity I can to learn more from you.

I wonder why the Saki causes the bleeding of the colors at the red(orange)/white borders, while something like Pro-Gold does not. Is it because of the relative amounts? Also, do you know if there is any truth to the supposed newer purple bag (with tosakin instead of ranchu) that is due to come out at some point?

As for debate, blame it on my dissertation mentor, who likes to argue

[MexiMike83 96]

So then what foods/lighting/water parameters can be used to enhance some colors but discourage others? Probably a dice roll in the emde, but I am curious.

[ichthius 122]

There could be a whole harry potter series written on the myth, make believe and anecdoteology of goldfish colors..

Feeding for reds/oranges/yellows is easy. The blackest black is over a good red but often breaks down.

Light or dark colors can cause the fish to expand or contact chromatophores and could speed up the genetic death of a cell...

I keep my fish well fed and happy and let their colors be what they will be. Control freaks should keep guppies not goldfish. Their genetics and color are much easier to control and manipulate.

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[ichthius 122]

Haha. Thank you for that explanation. I have always found your knowledge of goldfish biology impressive, and take every opportunity I can to learn more from you.

I wonder why the Saki causes the bleeding of the colors at the red(orange)/white borders, while something like Pro-Gold does not. Is it because of the relative amounts? Also, do you know if there is any truth to the supposed newer purple bag (with tosakin instead of ranchu) that is due to come out at some point?

As for debate, blame it on my dissertation mentor, who likes to argue

Learning is the best fish keeping skill! What's your PhD in?

I don't know anything about the Tosakin bag. I buy what I can get and use it to the best of my abilities. I actually use lionhead/oranda more than the saki. I use the saki on smaller fish as it gets down on the sand and the sand and food together. works wonders for floaty fish. I recently recommended sand to someone an in 24 hours her forever floaty fish is back to normal. YMMV.

The saki has pure astazanthin as an ingredient. That makes the Reds really pop and you want that in the red areas but some may leach into less desirable areas. I have an Oishi ranchu male that gets orange spots if I feed him Hikari koi spirulina which isn't supposed to bleed colors but it does. So I guess every fish and food permutation can have a result that is appreciated or despised.

I spend my time breeding and raising fish and don't sweat the details to much. I'm spending my free time getting a shipment from Japan together. Then we can have fish to mess up with pigments!

[dnalex 13,633]

My degree is in immunology, with special emphasis on innate immunity.

It's very strange, the floater-prone fish are in the tank with sand. Pro-Gold somehow doesn't make them float, but Saki does :/

That's the primary reason why I use one, not the other. I wouldn't have made a big issue about the color bleeding.

[ichthius 122]

My degree is in immunology, with special emphasis on innate immunity.

It's very strange, the floater-prone fish are in the tank with sand. Pro-Gold somehow doesn't make them float, but Saki does :/

That's the primary reason why I use one, not the other. I wouldn't have made a big issue about the color bleeding.

I think the sand helps most with constipation and gas issues. If the ligaments that keep the two lobes segregated fail and the bladder becomes on large spear or one lobe atrophies a little sand in the diet won't help.

[nicoleauryn 46]

Huh no kidding, the thought of sand in my tank scares me haha

[ichthius 122]

I have it in every tank, tub and pond.

[ichthius 122]

Alex - here's a little light reading about fish pigmentation that has a diagram showing the difference between fish and mammalian skin.

http://www.bettas4all.nl/photos/Scientificarticles/Kelshetal2004.pdf

[dnalex 13,633]

Thank you, David! Reviews are perfect. I will read it tonight.

[koko 14,340]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22364086: "

For our study eight female newborns of Swiss Albino mice were injected subcutaneously with MSG (2mg / gm of body wt. in a dilution 40 mg of per ml. of distilled water)" I don't necessarily agree with the FDA all the time, but I trust the world health organization. which was sited in the last link above.

The points I was making was that (we are probably talking about the same thing just worded differently), are these:

1) with almost any given substance you will find a percentage of the population sensitive to it, that doesn't necessarily make it bad. Like my peanut example.

2) Sample size is important to draw any real conclusions.

3) MSG is a salt

4) I'm not trying to defend MSG in anyway, I'm always a skeptic, which makes me a good scientist in my opinion.

I also noticed that from looking at a list of "anecdotal adverse effects" from

http://www.rd411.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1175:monosodium-glutamate-msg-fact-sheet&catid=100:miscellaneous-topics&Itemid=394

that the majority of these are subjective (see below). I wonder how many of these complaints were actually related to the MSG and not to something else or what the reaction would be to a placebo.

• Headache
  
• Flushing
  
• Sweating
  
• Facial pressure or tightness
  
• Numbness, tingling or burning in face, neck and other areas
  
• Rapid, fluttering heartbeats (heart palpitations)
  
• Chest pain
  
• Nausea
  
• Weakness
  

I would like to say. I suffer this problems.

For many years the DOCTORS! couldnt figure out why I was having Migraines. They ran 2-3 MRI's in one year to figure this out. Your not supposed to have that many of those (MRI's) in one year... So my husband (TD) started looking at my foods. Started taking things away from me. And What do you know I was allergic to MSG! and anything that is Man made version of this. As stated before there is a natural kind of MSG. But the kind we get in our foods are man made! I cant even eat friken Bologna now.!

Take a look at Sour cream, I mean why in the world do you need MSG in sour cream

[ichthius 122]

This lab studies ZF pigmentation. They've found genes in mutant lines, then found a similar pattern in wild species and then isolated the gene in the wild fish. They also have a way of tracking pigment cells long term in a fish. They have a color mutant that above a certain temperature the stripes on the tail switch from horizontal to vertical and back again when the temperature is restored.

http://protist.biology.washington.edu/dparichy/

[ichthius 122]

Here's a possibly more useful/simpler source of info on fish color:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatophore

[MexiMike83 96]

I have it in every tank, tub and pond.

Do you have problems of sand with your filters from the fish picking through it and spitting it out?

[ichthius 122]

I use box, sponge and central filtration so I do not have impeller driven motors on my tanks. If you do there are sands that are not magnetic which are the ones that cause the worst problems.

[ShawneeRiver 2,720]

Interesting stuff! I have always fed Omega One. That really means nothing because I don't have that many fish and haven't had them that long, but I've never had food-related floating. (Knocks on wood.)

Also, I just heard that Steve Jobs would turn orange at times because he ate a lot of carrots.