# canthaxantin and color enhancing supplements



## ChrisMc (Mar 7, 2004)

Ive been looking to find a way to boost the faded red of my basti's. Ive seen canthaxantin used to boost red pigmentation in canaries, salmon, and even for human pigmentation. Does anyone has experience with this? I have tried dusting with paprika but recently was told to put paprika in the fly media. I might try this in a few cultures to see if it helps.


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## Guest (Jul 12, 2004)

I dust the flies with paprika. It can take awhile to color the frogs back up.
All my frogs with redand orange colors get paprika dusted flies once a week.


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## Ed Martin (Mar 25, 2004)

Ben, 
Did you ever try mixing paprika with your tad food? I have a bunch of leuc eggs that should be hatching in a day or so that I was going to try it with. I planned on using the current batch of tads as the control to see if this new batch has any issues with being fed paprika once a week and if they morph out with brighter colors. 

Chris, I tried adding paprika and repcal to my FF cultures. I got a 20% reduction on average on the life a culture for paprika and 50% for repcal. 

Ed


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## ChrisMc (Mar 7, 2004)

I used paprika with repcal for over a month on a daily basis, but the calcium seemed to like to stick to the paprika more than to the flies.


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## Guest (Jul 12, 2004)

Ed,
With the tadpoles I have been feeding a mixture of spirulina flakes and TetraColor fish flakes. I just started adding paprika to the water of a batch of vittatus to see what effect it has.

Chris,
When I dust the flies with paprika I only use it. I grind it up into a fine powder with a mortar and pestle before dusting.


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## Ed Martin (Mar 25, 2004)

Chris, 
I actually added it to the culture mix. I had several discussions with people about "gutloading" the flies at IAD. It did not seem to work for me. 

Ben, 
How often are you feeding the tetramin? In addition to a spirulina, chlorella, stinging nettle and bee pollen (2:2:1:1), daily feeding I also feed "Aquarian" fish food about once a week but we are running out!
Ed


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## Guest (Jul 12, 2004)

Hi,

I use carrots in my recipe.. 
It is also very interesting for the conservation of the mixture...


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## Guest (Jul 13, 2004)

Ed
I am using "TetraColor: tropical flakes (Natural Color Enhancer)"








I feed this once per week, some times twice oncethe frogs have rear legs.

Urban,
How does the carrots effect your fly production?


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## Ryan (Feb 18, 2004)

Vitamin A should do the same as carots.


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## ChrisMc (Mar 7, 2004)

I guess I need to grind the paprika finer so it will stick. I didnt want to use straight paprika because I thought that it would burn their tongues. So nobody has used anything besides paprika for adult frogs?


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## Michael Shrom (May 20, 2004)

Their is some anecdotal evidence that canthaxanthin might cause liver damage. I think ground paprika is much safer. I occasionally use paprika for tads and frogs to correct colors. When I first used it I used it on everything. I wound up with powder blues that had yellow in them. I now am more cautious to use it only on frogs that have yellow, orange, and red.


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## Ed Martin (Mar 25, 2004)

Chris, I would think that some of the ingredients in the Tetracolor that Ben
is using are canthaxantin and apocarotinal (or some form of carotene). Have you ever seen canthaxantin sold in a pure form? As Michael said, I thought that they pulled this from the market in pure form because of the side effects in humans (trying to inhance tans, I think) Nekton-Rep-color has both canthaxantin and apocarotinal but it also has vitamin A, so I do not feel comfortable giving it to amphibians on a daily basis. There are also some supplements for birds (Quikon is one brand) that contain these color enhancers but my fear is that they too might contain other ingredients that could be harmful in quantity to
amphibians. 

Eric, how are you adding the carrots to the FF mixture? Have you seen a
reduction or an increase in the production levels of the cultures? 

Ed


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## Homer (Feb 15, 2004)

Ryan said:


> Vitamin A should do the same as carots.


You do NOT want to use Vitamin A, as it is a fat soluble vitamin that can build up to toxic levels in a frogs system. Beta carotene (the active ingredient in paprika) is a chemical that can be converted into Vitamin A if the frog is deficient, but is not a fat-soluble form that builds up to toxic levels like Vitamin A. Just an FYI so that you can CYA. :wink:


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