“…The source and concentration of carotenoids play an important role in pigmentation of ¢sh (Gouveia & Rema 2005). Various synthetic carotenoids, such as b-carotene (BC), astaxanthin (AX) (Choubert & Storebakken 1989;Storebakken & No 1992), as well as natural sources (Coral, Huberman, De la Lanza & Monroy-Ruiz 1998;Chien & Shiau 2005;Kalinowski, Robaina, Fernandez-Palacios, Schuchardt & Izquierdo 2005) have been used as dietary supplements to enhance the pigmentation of food ornamental ¢sh (Gouveia, Rema, Pereira & Empis 2003). E⁄ciency in pigmentation from the above sources can be attributed to species of target animal, type, composition, and concentration of the pigments contained, digestibility of the material itself, and possibly the presence of cofactors in the material involved in absorption and deposition (Torrissen, Hardy & Shearer 1989;Storebakken & No 1992;Wang, Chien & Pan 2006).…”