Arowana coloring has many factors. Big factor though is food, water changes, and stressless environment. Even the littlest thing can alter the coloring. An easy way to cheat is Lighting. I have no plants in the tank.. but i use a combination of black light(blue), red light(pinkish) and bright day light(6500k)... this brings out the full color spectrum of my fish and tank. Food is a big factor as well. To get the red lint on the tails, its extremely easy. Just do what you are doing with the hikari pellets and you get those beautiful red tints in about 2-3 months. maybe 1 if you do a good job with water changes/water parameters. Water hardness is also a factor for stress/environment. NJ has slightly harder water that an arowanas liking on my side of town, but i dont use anything to change it... i just cheat with lighting. Gutloading crickets and mealworms also help. I gutload with carrots and some old tetramin/omega1 tropical color added flakes. I dont see it helping but couldnt hurt right? Also I do make my own fish food. I ran out recently but it was glorious with the colors i made. I got this chemical powder that large companies use for colorations of red. starts with an A i believe... similar to betacarrotein if not better. and I mixed that into the food. Prawn is ok.. but can cause high fat contents in my opinion. If people can get cholestrol problems off shrimp... so can fish. So i try to stay away from that and gutload insects. like crickets and mealworms (yes I know they are high in fat as well). I breed my own superworms. and i gutload them till they shed and feed them when they are soft. my jardini and silver together love them. but hikari is definitely the way to go... You can also use SERA arowana pellets... but they make the water red too... so they are definitely doing something wrong.. and i believe the grade of protein is slightly off than efficient.
