# Ruby Red Spilo Colors Fading



## welsher7 (Jul 29, 2005)

I've had this guy for 7 months now. I just took some new pictures yesterday and posted them with the pics from the day I got it. After looking at the pics side by side I noticed the color has faded over past 7 months. 
then








now









It is 5.5"-6"; eats silversides, shrimp, talapia, and smelts. I feed it 2-3x a week. Tank is filtered by an xp3 loaded up with bio matrix and has a koralia evo 1050 on one side. The tank parameters are stable trates 20ppm, trites 0, ammonia 0, pH around 7, and temp is 78-80.

I know there are a lot more RRS on the site now, so is anyone else seeing any fading?


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## jp80911 (Apr 3, 2008)

I remember seeing rhomkeeper's RRS, most of the red had faded out, kind of look just like a mac. Not sure how long he had it tho.


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## Piranha_man (Jan 29, 2005)

He does look like he's faded, but still a very colorful spilo!
I wonder what would happen if you switched your feeding to nothing but shrimp for awhile?

He's still more colorful than mine... 
Mine's really dark... like a deep charcoal color.


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## jp80911 (Apr 3, 2008)

will stuff the food with some carrot help??


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## Smoke (Sep 8, 2010)

Mine lost most its red because it darkened up so much. I think that's what happens as they get older. But the eyes are still very red and the jaw very wide, makes it looks very evil still.


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## welsher7 (Jul 29, 2005)

The only that has changed is the heater. It got stuck on and the water got warm to the touch, so replaced it. That was about 3 weeks ago though. Its diet hasn't really changed.I also forgot to mention that I soak all food in vitachem before feeding. I'm going to start feeding more shrimp and see if that helps.

Yes it was a stealth. Now I have an eheim jager.


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## Johnny_Zanni (Nov 8, 2009)

jp80911 said:


> will stuff the food with some carrot help??


Yes.


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## Tensa (Jul 28, 2008)

ok ill chime in here. ive noticed others with color fading in their spilos as well. there are a couple reasons. the top two being diet and conditions(many variables such as time of day, water quality, etc). now conditions effect the color of every type of P such as them losing color as they sleep or darkening when breeding for example. so once we rule out condition variances from picture one and picture two we can benefit from looking at the diet. now the two dominant colors in RRS are redish and Yellowish. also showing a spectrum of other colors such as purple for example. now shrimp will make the red pop (carrots as well lol if you somehow manage to get the RRS to eat it lol) so you have to think of foods that would enhance/revive the yellow color...i learned when dealing with frontosas that the color is difficult to deal with sometimes because u see a color in a picture and from wild fish but when they are in the tank for awhile color fades so in the case of frontosas i just found something to introduce in the diet to enhance/revive the color naturally. no specific combinations of food just trial and error.


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## Smoke (Sep 8, 2010)

Hey Tensa what size is your RRS now and how's the color looking? (Not sure if you still have one)


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## Johnny_Zanni (Nov 8, 2009)




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## Tensa (Jul 28, 2008)

i stopped measuring my P's a long time ago couldnt much tell you. but ive managed to keep the color on mine like in the original pics i posted (many of the pics got lost in the upgrade







).


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## jp80911 (Apr 3, 2008)

Tensa said:


> i stopped measuring my P's a long time ago couldnt much tell you. but ive managed to keep the color on mine like in the original pics i posted (many of the pics got lost in the upgrade
> 
> 
> 
> ...


pic or it didn't happen, lol j/k but would really love to see some recent pic of the RRS. dude you really need to get a camera or camera phone. for our sake lol


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## Tensa (Jul 28, 2008)

jp80911 said:


> i stopped measuring my P's a long time ago couldnt much tell you. but ive managed to keep the color on mine like in the original pics i posted (many of the pics got lost in the upgrade
> 
> 
> 
> ...


pic or it didn't happen, lol j/k but would really love to see some recent pic of the RRS. dude you really need to get a camera or camera phone. for our sake lol
[/quote]
well u could box me up your cam...sent it to me lol


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## Johnny_Zanni (Nov 8, 2009)




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## Zeushalives (Dec 30, 2010)

This is a funny post, I was JUST commenting on my RRS losing his vibrant color. No lie, it seems to come and go. He had nearly a month of fading then suddenly I added a stronger powerhead (just for the hell of it, not as a remedy) and then BAM! His colors are now back and VERY vibrant.


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## welsher7 (Jul 29, 2005)

I have strong powerhead in the tank, its koralia evo 1050gph. So I don't think that is my issue.

I have increased my WC schedule and started feeding more shrimp. So we will see if that helps.


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## Zeushalives (Dec 30, 2010)

Keep me posted.


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## welsher7 (Jul 29, 2005)

new pics from today after a couple water changes, and correcting the white balance on the camera.


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## jp80911 (Apr 3, 2008)

looks better than the last pic


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## Tampa2Josh (Jan 9, 2011)

Beautiful spilo, I just got mine from SA yesterday and she's awesome, but not half as nice as your fish(yet). I know this isn't exactly on topic, but what camera lenses do you use for those awesome pics? I use a Canon rebel t2i stock lenses but I can't get it to take those sick close ups of my spilo like you got.


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## welsher7 (Jul 29, 2005)

I used Nikon D50 with the stock lens, I think it is 55-88 or something around there. The 2nd pic was cropped using photobucket.


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## Tampa2Josh (Jan 9, 2011)

Thanks, I was having trouble getting anything to load from my MAC to the site, now I just need to figure out how to zoom in better. Thanks for the advice, I'm going to try Photobucket.


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## Piranha-Freak101 (Dec 8, 2010)

welsher7 said:


> new pics from today after a couple water changes, and correcting the white balance on the camera.


Love those blood red eyes! He looks great


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## welsher7 (Jul 29, 2005)

Yea, the eyes are killer, from certain angels it looks like he has a black stripe the runs vertically through them too.

Pretty much just your average awesome fish.


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## Piranha-Freak101 (Dec 8, 2010)

welsher7 said:


> Yea, the eyes are killer, from certain angels it looks like he has a black stripe the runs vertically through them too.
> 
> Pretty much just your average awesome fish.


Yea you can se it in the last pic


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## Tampa2Josh (Jan 9, 2011)

He looks way better than your average awesome fish, I hope my rrs ends up anywhere near as nice as yours...I know this is off topic, but I posted a new thread looking for a little rrs help and/or advice, I'll let you comment there if you have any info to help me but let me ask one quick question, how often does your rrs eat?


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## welsher7 (Jul 29, 2005)

I feed it 2-3 three times a week.


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