Steve Brooks
Gary Lange wrote:
>
> I was a bit dissapointed when I asked earlier whether any of the large scale
> commercial breeders in Oz were using Astaxanthin. It has started to catch on
> with the Florida people and I always figured that you all were quicker than
> they were.
>
> Therefore I started my own experiments with only Astaxanthin, none of the other
> products that Mach alluded to. My study has been going now for 7 weeks. Two
> fifteen gallon bare tanks on the same circulation system were used as control
> tank and Astaxanthin tank. One tank was fed mainly Aquarian flake food, the
> other Aquarian flake that had been sprayed with about 150 ppm Astaxanthin (150
> milligrams per killigram {2.2 pounds} dry weight) and dried. Since the powder
> contains either .7% or 1.4% Astaxanthin you have to do a bit of Math to figure
> your measurements but it really is a "flea fart" amount. Looking back I would
> have doubled perhaps even tripled the dose as the product isn't harmful in any
> way and in fact is quite beneficial to the fish, (suggested by the manufacturer
> and no contrary data shown to date). I have been told that by increasing the
> amount of Astaxanthin that you will see the results in as little as two weeks
> with rainbowfish. It is also supposed (untested by me so far) to increase egg
> production. My test subjects also get frozen bloodworms and brine shrimp which
> is the norm for all of my juvenile and adult fish.
>
> Tested fish include: Boesemani, coen river trifasciata, pierucieae, "yellow"
> parkinsoni, Kamaka splendidas, desert gobies and what was supposed to be a
> Latram trifasciata. The latrams have been a total dissapointment and even
> color food hasn't much helped the 3 inch fish. The rest of the fish in this
> this study were at the size where I would like to sex them and sell them, about
> 1.25 to 1.5 inches and just starting to put on mass.
> Like Vitamen C, Astaxanthin oxidizes very quickly so only small amounts should
> be left in the fishroom, the rest in the freezer. It makes it an ideal
> candidate for frozen prepared foods. It is a fine powder like spirulina so it
> is also easy to feed to newly hatched rainbow fry or for feeding to newly
> hatched brine shrimp. It begs the question, do white worms fed Astaxanthin
> powder (brick red) also turn red? Astaxanthin is the stuff that "bugs" are
> made of. It is the red in krill, daphnia, crayfish (many commercial sources
> use crayfish oil for color additives) and a good many other things that we feed
> to our fish to give them color. Only it does it directly without having to go
> thru the "bug" middleman. It enhances reds, oranges and yellows. Some corals
> are supposed to break this down and use the products to produce other colors
> too. I don't know whether this works for other colors in bows though.
>
> I hope to have some photo examples within a few weeks. Coen river fish are
> much brighter, yellows and oranges. I think that I can also say that for the
> boesemani but the strain has always shown good color at an early age. Placing
> them together for the photograph might make that judgement easier. Kamaka
> splendidas are much brighter. Bruce this would be a perfect experiment for
> that duboulayi from that lake that goes so dull once removed from it's natural
> food source. The desert gobies seem a bit brighter yellow but I'll have to
> compare the group side by side to know absolutely for sure. Although the
> pierucieae is mainly blue I think that it is also a brighter blue. I think
> that I already have an easy to see difference with the coen rivers and the
> kamakas. I think it will also how true for the desert gobies and the
> boesemani. The young parkinsonis still don't show the brighter colors of the
> adults but anyone who has kept them knows that it really takes two years for a
> park to come into it's own. The others are still a bit tougher to tell but I
> think I'll see a difference when I put them in the photo tank together. If I
> had started with higher doses I think I would be seeing a much greater
> response. Those that have started with a 10X higher dose are claiming that
> they are easily seeing a great response in two weeks. I will eventually repeat
> a higher dosage with appropriate controls to see if this is actually that
> rapid.
>
> Feeding Astaxanthin from hatching: I just had one tank of papuae fry that I
> starting feeding the powder to from day one. They were fed this every other
> feeding or so, alternating with fresh APR powder and spirulina. When they got
> larger they received baby brine shrimp and more Astaxanthin ( pronounced asta
> like Shasta, Zan-thin). I didn't really think much of it until someone came
> over and we got out the flashlight to have a better look. At 1/2 inch they
> were some of the brightest papuae that I've ever raised! Really bright yellows
> and oranges. Just like the bright colors shown on Neal Armstrong's slides of
> wild caught fish. I am now starting to use this product on all of my fry. If
> I can produce good colors early on it should be MUCH easier to sell rainbowfish
> at a much earlier age to the pet industry. I should repeat that Astaxanthin is
> a natural product much like spirulina is and is not a chemical hormone so it is
> without those type of problem side-effects. I think that the color will stay
> with the fish as long as it would have if it had been colored using live foods
> in a life outdoors. For fish like parkinsoni adults this can easily be 8-9
> months.
>
> There are two companies devoted to selling Astaxanthin and they also have quite
> a bit of information. They have lots of examples of how this product is
> already being used.
>
> In the original post Mach mentioned some problems with his fish but I think
> that they will find that most of the problems will come to feeding too much
> fatty foods and probably feeding too much. Too bad that their tests didn't
> just include the addition of Astaxanthin. Other tests going on in Hawaii have
> used just Astaxanthin and all have been highly positive. When compared to
> products like spirulina and the stuff that Sanders is selling, they aren't even
> in the same ballpark.
> I am wildly excited about this product and think that it will eventually be the
> most important development to hit the tropical fish culture industry in the
> last 10-20 years. For many of the rainbowfish this will be their ticket into
> the mainstream market. Now if we can just keep the dumb US wholesalers from
> crossing them and screwing them up!
>
> cheers,
>
> Gary Lange
> gwlange at STLNET.com
> Rainbowfish Study Group of North America
> http://home.stlnet.com/~gwlange/rainbowfish.index.html
>
> ----------
> > From: Mach T. Fukada <fukada at hawaii.edu>
> > To: rainbowfish at pcug.org.au
> > Subject: [RML] Pseudomugil diet
> > Date: Monday, September 14, 1998 6:49 AM
> >
> > Got some prelminary data for a feed trial I am working on with the people
> > at the U. I have been supplying them P. furcatus for their work and we
> > have been finding out several things. I will post a adobe acrobat file of
> > the latest Honolulu Aquarium Society newsletter with a breif rundown on
> > what was being done. They were using a high fat diet and got them to grow
> > really rapidly. Also color additives were tested, spirulina and
> > anthoaxthin (sp?) were found to produce really significantly brighter
> > yellow/oranges,and reds. (even females displayed more color,even onthe
> > pectorals, dorsals, etc) However, I noticed that a fair number of fish had
> > spinal deformaties. I sent some fish off to a fish Vet (to check for
> > mycobacteriosis) and he found that there were fatty deposits in the fishes
> > liver (indicating possible impairment, but not mycobacteriosis). The
> > deformaties we councluded seemed to be cosistant with deffiencies of Vit C,
> > Vit D, Ca or some other mineral. I have theorized that the impaired livers
> > might have prevented the normal Vit D metabolisms resulting in the bent
> > back deformaties associated with mycobacteriosis (which is also a result of
> > liver impairment). Also the growth rate of the fish might have been so
> > great that the Ca or Vit C requirments may have also increased. We are
> > going to redo the trials and increas Ca.
> > I am going to try color enhancement via spirulina and the other stuff and
> > see if the deformaties appear. If they do I will have the livers of these
> > fish checked out for impairments, lesions, etc. I do suspect that in
> > nature the zooplankton that the fish feed on naturally concentrate algae
> > components, compunds, pigments (beta carotene, Anthothaxin ? sp) and these
> > pigments are lacking in artificially reared fish. I am going to do some
> > tests on my own and get back to the group. I have noticed that the juiced
> > fish haven't been fed any more of the stuff but still retain color. Also
> > adult fish reared without these additives do not seem to develop the same
> > amount of color. Is it possible that the chromatophores are made at a
> > certain point in the fishes development? Also based on the color deposition
> > in certain areas associated with secondary sexual characteristics is it
> > possible that the compounds in these additives have hormone analog
> properties.
> >
> > Right now I suspect that: the high fat diet although causes rapid growth,
> > may impair liver functions resulting in deformaties. It also may reduce
> > the longivity and fecundity of the fish.
> >
> > Spirulina and anthothaxin may be important pigment precursors.
> >
> > I think we are making some headway into the dietary needs of bows so Iwill
> > keep onto it. I am going to try and suggest other fish to these people.
> > Maybe P. cyanodorsails (if I can get them big enough and into freshwater, I
> > have found that if they are kept in a high ph hard water situation they
> > seem to be thriving , another experiment for another time) maybe P.
> > tennelus, and P. signifer. Might be a good thing to try it on M. bosmani
> > and see if the yellow orange half is enhanced in the same way (Gary you
> > think I could get some bosmani fingerlings from you? ;-)
> > Mach T. Fukada, Web Master
> > fukada at hawaii.edu
> > Honolulu Aquarium Society
> > http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/2948/HASF.html