Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does paprika really work in maintaining the yellow coloring? I have 4 juv tincs and it looks as if the yellow is starting to darken, so I'm considering trying it.

Thanks
joe

Never tried it but I have seen tricolors on it and have seen them without it...big deferent's
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Brian Ferriera JR
Plympton, Ma

P. Terribilis (orange)
P.Bicolor (soon)
D. azureus
D. ventrimaculatus
E. hahneli
D. tinctorius (Oyapok )
D. Fantasticus
D. leucomelas
D. castaneoticus (soon)

I put paprika in all of my cultures. It helps alot. The yellow of my Citronellas compared to a friends who does not use it is huge. His are really faded where mine are a bright yellow. He is going to start using it now also since we compared earlier this week.

It certainly appears to work with my pumpkin orange galacs, but I'm not sure why. Paprika probably contains high concentrations carotenes, which are orange pigments that can be metabolically converted to vitamin A. In humans, I have seen skin yellowing (pseudojaundice)in a couple of people and a baby who have been on almost exclusively carrot diets, especially excessive amounts of carrot juice and V8. However, I don't know how this would enhance the blue colors in frogs. There may be something else as well. In any event, it doesn't seem to hurt to try it. I just use a sprinkle of it along with the regular vitamin powders to dust the flies.
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Patty
Lost River, Idaho

I also dust my flies rather than add to the cultures and it seems to work fine....the orange on my galacs and yellow on my citronellas seems to be enhanced and I'm waiting to see with my tricolors.......

>>It certainly appears to work with my pumpkin orange galacs, but I'm not sure why. Paprika probably contains high concentrations carotenes, which are orange pigments that can be metabolically converted to vitamin A. In humans, I have seen skin yellowing (pseudojaundice)in a couple of people and a baby who have been on almost exclusively carrot diets, especially excessive amounts of carrot juice and V8. However, I don't know how this would enhance the blue colors in frogs. There may be something else as well. In any event, it doesn't seem to hurt to try it. I just use a sprinkle of it along with the regular vitamin powders to dust the flies.
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>>Patty
>>Lost River, Idaho

:

I use it in my fly cultures as well... for some frogs it works for some it doesn't. It only works by adding orange so to a point it can inhance reds and yellows (and the best on orange, duh!). I believe beet juice works great on the really deep red frogs, but paprika seems to do the job well enough. My tricolors have an obvious color difference... non-paprika diet santa isabels are rather pink looking (check out the pic on tincs.com) while mine are bright blaring red. My adults are not WCs, I've had them since babies, I just gave them a lot of paprika in their diets and they completely colored up in about 2 years to the point where they looked almost as bright as their parents, which were WC.

There is stuff you can add to increase the blues in some frogs, but that doesn't seem to be nearly as diet dependent as the reds/yellows so I wouldn't even bother with it.