Fish Coloration And Stress... Pale And Dark....

[Scott MacAdam]

Well in my time fish keeping I have always thought that a darker colored fish was more healthy and not stressed... I came to this conclusion myself when buying african cichlids... it seemed that when they were bagged and brought home they would get stressed out and turn very pale sometimes but after a few days they would be bright and vibrantly colored with deep and dark coloration for the most part... also when I had a few die, i noticed the day before that they were very pale again and then I found a couple of them dead.... although this was a bad experience to lose a few fish, I figured that when they were pale it was bad..... so when I see a plae fish my mind automatically goes "BAD" lol! follow me?

I was just in a topic about possibly sexing my JD when I was refered to another topic from a member who had the same problem....

in this topic there was this quote from a member commenting on the pictures posted in this topic....


"If she gets dark it's because she feels threatened or scared. It happens from an emotional response. If your fish is normally a tan to purple than it is happy and healthy. The color spots should always be vibrant but the stripes will appear as I said, as an emotional response."


and then a rebuttal from another member


"Jack Dempseys getting dark doesn't mean stress, alot of fish change color to lighter or darker based on the enviroment, it's used for camoflaush, stress has nothing to do with it, I had my old dempsey (RIP) in a 55gallon tank, and because I had one side moonlight and the other regular light along with black gravel, he was darker than usual... Water stats were fine"



I didn't think it had much to do with camoflauge and i thought it was the opposite of the first quote....
Can anyone give me some help on this so I can make sure that my fish is healthy and happy.....

 

[england]

well i can say my female jd has never gone dark....always light n pale as you saw in pictures....and my wall of my tank is black

 

[Scott MacAdam]

thanks for taking intrest here again nelly. it will be good to see the outcome and get a final decision.

I'm guessing it's pretty clear that the 2 posts are related! hahahaha!

 

[england]

yep how young is this jd?
prob with cichlids is its exsteamly difficult to sex them until you get to the point where there sexualy active then its looking for tail tail signs and breeding tubes...
males<long thin and pointy
females tube<fat stumpy and edged off>

it is true cichlids change colour all the time...its like the aruara abourialus in my tank<northern lights

 

[kribensis12]

In my experience, pale means stressed , not happy, or sick. But some fish are naturally that color. But my jd's( had them for a while) were never plae or dark.

 

[Scott MacAdam]

sorry wrong topic....... lol but yeah mine is a bit in between on the pale and dark.....

 

[Don Trinko]

Different fish reac different. In general with less light most fish will get darker. When scared my Angels get pale and there is little sign of the stripes. MY Severum and Discus are the oposite. They get dark and hide when stressed and get lighter and more colorfull when happy. With most fish colerfull is good and colorless is bad. Don T.

 

[Gatorbait]

IME, fish tend to be a little darker with darker substrate. I've never noticed a difference dependant upon the background, tho.

Stressed fish are more pale. If I take a cichlid and put him into a bucket to move him, he turns very pale instantly. My redtail black sharks did this also. They would turn almost white.

With cichlids tho I think color is more for aggressiveness and breeding. One might have a cichlid that isn't all that dark but add another and the dominant will immediately turn darker and the sub-dominate will try to be as pale as possible.