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I have been asked a question from a non-fish person.

It is if you place a golf fish in a dark room will it turn colourless???

No.

It takes thousands of years for fish such as blind cave fish to lose their pigments.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

I have a friend who has an goldfish that she keeps in a very small tank without a light in a very dim room. The tank is on a bookshelf so even when lights are on in the room, it doesn't get any. When she got the fish five years ago (at a fair), it was bright orange. I saw it recently and it looks really bleached out -- barely orange at all.

But -- and this is a big but -- none of the conditions this fish are kept in are what most of us would consider ideal. Stress can cause a fish to lose its color; goldfish can also change color with age. So there's no way to say what the cause of the change really was. My friend insists it's the lack of light, but I'm not convinced.

You can change the colour of crayfish though...

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

yeh evelotion doesn't occure overnight ]

Or for that matter will you ever see evolution take place in any one organism as it requires generations.

Thats a hoax. Evolution overnight? C'mon get real.

Wait, wait - lots of aspects of coloration require sunlight. In the same way that humans may tan (or burn) with time in the sun, goldfish are well-known to be much brighter when kept outdoors. It's not evolution; it's vitamin D and melanin and those sorts of things. Black moors rarely if ever keep their black if not given sunlight, and, yes, there's evidence to show that many goldfish will be fairly pale if kept in the dark.

-Molly
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If you lock a black person in a closet, they will not turn white. They will get a little bit lighter, but not much. It's the same way with goldfish.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

I'm not saying the fish is going to be see-through or anything, but long-term no-sunlight is going to mean a real difference in coloration. Scales aren't skin.

-Molly
Visit shelldwellers.com!

they would probably become very bad-tempered and ill before they lost a lot of colour surely? I think moors go a sort of brassy colour if they are denied sunlight..?



For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

I definitely wouldn't care for their health (Vitamin D, not to mention the general stress of not being able to see anything) but, well, we all know goldfish can live through a lot. Not an experiment I'd want to see, though, even if the tests subjects got lovely ponds after the fact.

-Molly
Visit shelldwellers.com!

Thanks. I will let my friend know all this.

THanks for the help

Is there a way to imitate sunlight???

Do you need a special tube/fluro???

you can get a sunlight/daylight tube. Get one designed for reptiles so you get the D3 benefits.

Don't mount it directly on top of the tank, mount it on the ceiling. There has been some talk of the D3 tubes causing issues with fish, but I have seen a few successful ones where the sunlight tube serves as room lighting in combination with other tubes, and the fish have actually improved rather than what I was told they would do, which is become blind and display erratic behaviour.

I am unsure if this has to do with the proximity of the tube itself, but better safe than sorry.

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett