Yea he's quite similar in color to my previous blue based gold xback, except the rims on this guy are much lighter. He's a little darker than i expected, mind you i keep it in a tank with a black sand bottom and big pieces of dark driftwood so maybe that has some influence on the color development.
I live in a condo so when designing my tank, I didn't want to go with a sump. What I ended up doing was drilling 4 holes into the bottom of my tank and using pvc piping and the four holes, I attached 2 fx5's directly to the tank. I also have an inline external heater on one of the outlets so there's nothing inside the tank except for the 4 pvc pipes. If I could redo it, I probably would've drilled the holes in different locations to make it easier to hide the pipes, however that'll be for the next tank.
Usually with the driftwood in proper position, you can't see the pvc from the straight ahead angle, however lately, my rays have been going crazy in the tank and no matter how often I try to set the driftwood, they'll keep knocking it over. Must be breeding season!
Anyways, he's pushing 14" I would guess. Very moody guy, won't eat from anyone else. He's going to have to learn quick because I'm going on a trip for 2 weeks in June.
Aside from that, great quality fish. Great to see the progression, as the color creeps up over the back.