melnick6003

You guys have been so much help already but i do have another question. I have two chinese algea eater and over the last week one has gone from a brown to a yellow. he is still swimming around and eating. I have checked my water and have o PPM amonia and my pH is a little high 7.3 ph however ph has always been that high since our tap water has high ph, i did add drift wood a couple of weeks ago to help nat bring it down hasn't done much. does anyone know what would make him discolor and not any other fish in my tank. even my other algea eater is fine. all my other fish seem perfect. thanks in advance you guys all rock.

Matt

I am Alsmost sure that they start off brown when they are young and then turn yellow as they grow.

Hope That Helps
From Matt

gremlin

This is perfectly normal. I have had 2 go through that change. I bough them at WalMart and they were normal colored CAE's less than an inch long. Last summer (2007) I bought two - one stayed normal colored and the other got yellow splotches. It didn't go fully yellow, but it had yellow splotches. Those two went to a friend for her school tanks. This last summer I bought a couple more, and once again, one of them turned yellow. It turned solid lemony yellow. Now it is gettinggreen scales on its back half again. I don't know for sure if it is a difference in the water temperature, water parameters, or if it is just a normal color mutation, but it is kinda cool to have a chameleon fish! Here are a couple of pics so you can see what mine turned into. The first pic is the two from last year, and the second pic is the all yellow one about a month before I brought it in for the winter. Hard to believe that every one of these fish started out with identical coloring!

Attached Images

	08-07-07 2 algae eaters to school.JPG (44.6 KB, 5 views)
	yellow algae eater 9 10 08.JPG (88.9 KB, 5 views)

melnick6003

thanks so much for everything that makes sense being that i took a water sample into the pet store and they said it was perfect. Iwas so worried thanks for the info!!! It is nice to get info that is correct cause i asked the ppl at the store that sold it to me and they said there is no way the change color it must be some kind of stress

gremlin

It spooked me the first time this happened to me. Since I knew nothing was wrong with the environment, I read up everything I could about them. Apparently, it is a normal color mutation. It is not seen in the wild as much, because the light colored fish are easier for predators to see so they get eaten before they can breed.