Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Why are my fish light colored?

I've stocked my pond a year ago and fish seem to not have any color, almost white. My bluegill and my bass both seem colorless I guess you could say. Is there any particular reasoning for this?

My year olds.

Nice sized fish for one year old. How is the light penetration? I've often seen that in muddy ponds.

You can see about a foot and a half into the water, the catfish keep it fairly muddy though.

I'm with Dave in that water clarity may be the culprit. Cooler water also tends to subdue coloration. Do you have the hybrid gills in the same pond as the native?

Go fishing. It's good for you.

Wow!! My 2 year old fish are just now reaching 10 inch. Are you feeding them PEDs? Ha! Nice fish

Next one you catch put it in a black or very dark 5 gallon bucket with about 3 gallon pond water in it for about 3 to 5 minutes. Needs to be a bucket not much light penetrates.

Pull it out and check the coloration.

Turbid water in my sediment pond always makes those fish look washed out.

I suspect as your fish gain another year or two in age they will get more colorful.

With my experience with tropical fish, as well as our pond fish over the years the sun will darken the fish colours as well as the fish food.

With tropical fish the food with more reds in it will bring out the colour of the fish. I don't know what is in the red foods or the blood worms but man will it colour up a fish.

Cheers Don.

Color intensity or hue of fish is a survival 'thing'. Members are correct - turbid water promotes lighter colored fish so the match or blend into the surrounding water hue. If fish were dark in cloudy murky water they would be more noticeable and more vulnerable to in water and above water predation.
Generally the clearer the water the more colorful the fish tend to be. Clear water often has a dark bottom and from above the fish necessarily needs to blend into the surroundings for a better chance of survival.

Thanks for the responses makes sense what bill said. I actually got these bluegill in April last year and they were 1-2 inches and they haven't missed a day off feeding yet.

White flamingos and pink flamingos are the same bird. The difference is the pink ones have eaten a lot of brine shrimp and that is what gives the birds the pink feathers. The red coloration in the brine shrimp.

Mating will change a lot of fishes colors also. Some fish will use coloration in the mating process or also as warning to others. Not sure how much pond fish do this, but I think they do it some. The males seem to be more colorful while on the nest.

That is why I figured as his fish get older and more mature they will gain some color. My biggest, oldest fish seem to be more colorful.

There you go. That makes sense to me now. I knew about the flamingo and that it was their food that changed their colour but didn't know it was the brine shrimp.

We fed large pickle jars of brine shrimp to our angel fish fry just after hatching. I am sure the red food was brine shrimp base too.

Thanks for connecting the dots for me.

I'm in Bonaire NA right now, where we spend most of the winter. The south end of the island is mostly owned by Cargill and they have large multiple evaporation and condensation ponds where they pump sea water into and the near constant trade winds evaporate the water off, then they harvest the salt. Huge piles of salt. Quite an operation to see when they are harvesting a pond. Big conveyor loades it into ships. We dive the 'salt pier' when ships are not docked.

In these shallow (maybe 2 feet deep) warm ponds the brine shrimp thrive. So it is at certain times of the year a flamingo haven, with the flamingos eating brine shrimp to their hearts content. I always kid my wife when she says the sea salt tasts better than mined salt, it is because the flamingo poop gives it that special flavor. She never seems amused at what I think is a great line!

These salt ponds are dedicated to road salt, though we have eaten it. I meet a lot of Canadians in Bonaire!