Lighting and peacocks

I got some fish from someone who has no light on his tanks when I put him in my tank with a 6500k bulb the colors where way nicer so it does matter.
what is the bad backround and color of gravel that makes fish look bad??

Wow, that is some difference. Nice looking fish either way.

That's good to hear. I have a grow out tank going with somewhere around 18 Malawi fry that range from 1.5 to 2.5. I have no light and was getting concerned that they would color up. I didn't realize it would take a year for them to get color.

chefjimmy wrote: Here is a dumb question, but does lighting help peacocks color up, or improve appearance.

I have a few tanks full of peacocks, with no lights, just ambient light, and my males are very drab.

Jimmy I used to breed these all the time(sunshine and Red Shouldered) for mine it did not matter if I had light on them or not they were brightly colored. Most Peacocks are plankton eaters and deeper water with little sunlight from my reading experience. So I would feed Plankton,Krill and sinking pellets but would also feed frozen food like Julian Sprung saltwater food as a treat.
It would also take them at least a year before full color.

I think a couple people have hit it on the head concerning sunlight. In my opinion aquarium lighting doesn't produce the same affect as sunlight does.
To read about different foods, the best place is to go to oscarfish.com and they give their ratings on food, ingredients, quality etc etc.. Very informative. We have fed NLS and my green flake mix of vegies and spirulina exclusively for the last 10 years.

Although I most hardily agree that sunlight does add color to most fish including peacocks, I have to disagree that aquarium lights enhance a fishes color. Aquarium lights show the colors but they do not cause a fish to color more in my opinion. None of our peacocks have direct lighting on them. It is all over head and in the middle of the aisle. I've raised thousands of peacocks without direct lighting nor sunlight and they have full color. A peacocks beauty is based on it's genes and not just the males. Females have to have high quality genes also to keep the colors vibrant. I am on my eighth generation of ngaras and they are better now than when I started with them 20 years ago. Again this is just my opinion in keeping aulonocara for over 40 years.

I'm with Mike on this one. I put some peacock hybrids (I don't favor this stuff, but I was curious what they'd turn out to look like) out in a tub pond last summer. By the end of summer they were amazingly blue, a color you never see in the tank. Sunlight affects the processing of some vitamins within the body and that might have something to do with it. Alas, after I returned them indoors, the colors slowly faded to a more normal coloration, but still decent.