The deadline is drawing nigh for submissions to the first Cat Chat of 2008 and my first as editor. Anything catfish related, however vaguely, is welcome. Send it to me at editor@catfishstudygroup.org.

It's been found that water conditions affect the hatch itself, rather than anything else, and that the fry can't break out of the shell if they're too far away from the ideal. I read recently, though, of someone who had this problem in the first few spawns but that later spawns seemed to handle the ...

The similar conditions I was talking about were mine, rather than yours. I don't condition water for any tank differently so they all end up around pH7. My GH is 16 degrees and my KH is around 3 degrees so I would have trouble changing it deliberately. My habrosus and hastatus are in a 60x30x30cm ...

One thing that jumps to mind is ammonia. Accepting your filters may be mature, ammonia is toxic in really tiny amounts once you get above a pH of about 7.5. If you can bring your pH to around 7.0 somehow I think you might do better. That said, I have problems with C. pygmaeus. C. habrosus and C ...

Please don't get just one corydoras. They're a shoaling fish and are just not happy in anything less than groups of three individuals and, in some species, even more. Three is a real minimum for their best maintenance.

Corys don't eat snails. You need a dorad (Raphael catfish) species for that. Corys will eat pretty much anything small that is in or on the substrate but they don't predate on my Endler fry. I'm sure they'd eat a dead one if they could suck it into their mouths but I wouldn't have thought they could ...

In a tank that size you can keep some of the larger corydoradinae, such as Brochis splendens, in groups of five or more. All cory-types catfish like company and won't show themselves to advantage unless there are three or four of a species. Single fish of different species will group together but I ...

Mine will take standard tropical flake, Tabimin, Interpet adhesive tablets and all kinds of frozen food, such as bloodowrm and daphnia.

Keith

This does break down a bit if there are enough fish. I have about 30 in one tank made up of seven species and you frequently see inter-species groups, though there are often single-species groups as well, all within a shoal. I'm sure size is also important. They seem to group by both species and ...