Many types of bland tropical fish are being spruced up with dye injections to give them a non-natural color.
When you go to the grocery store to get your groceries, you buy an orange and you expect it to be an orange colour when you get it home. But what would happen if you got it home and it changed to blue? I’m sure you would be back at that store demanding a refund. We all know there’s no such thing as blue oranges. When it comes to knowing the real colour of fish; that is a different story.
Many people in the aquarium hobby are easily fooled by artificially coloured fish. For many years, I was one of them and it wasn’t until the introduction of the Red Parrot fish that I finally caught on. This fish is a genetically engineered fish which is a combination of a Gold Severum and a Red Devil Cichlid. These fish are showing up in stores coloured in green, blue and purple.
If you go to an aquarium store and buy a beautiful fish for your show tank, you would want it to stay the same colour as the day you bought it. That doesn’t happen. The coloring fades after a few months. Stores won’t give refunds because a fish has faded. I believe there should be a warning; beware color fades after a few months.
