Corydoras paleatus - Breeding Size

[Darren Balch]

Good Afternoon,

Being a relative newcommer to breeding Corydoras I would regard myself as being quite sucessful as i have so far managed to breed 5 types in past 9 months or so (

Corydoras panda

,

Corydoras paleatus

,

Corydoras aeneus

, Corydoras aeneus Albino &

Corydoras sterbai

).

By far the easiest and most prolific have been the

Corydoras paleatus

. I have a small group of 7 or 8 individuals which seem to be laying eggs a couple of times a week minimum, with the occassional week gap depending on how hot the weather is. The breeding group is housed in a 4 ft community tank and most of the fish seem to leave the eggs alone long enough for me to collect and place into breeding nets which i have in good flow parts of the tank. Once they are a 4 or 5 weeks old and feeding ok i transfer them into a 2ft grow out tank which seems to work well until they are large enough to sell on to my LFS. On saturday I noticed that the last batch of fish approx 6-8 weeks old (i should really keep better records) have started laying eggs already.

Ive never had this before with such young fish. Should i try and seperate males and females as soon as i think i can tell them apart or just leave them to get on with it? Ideally i guess its not a great idea to leave them as they could be related?

I am also currently trying to condition 2 other groups of Corys (

Corydoras loxozonus

&

Corydoras trilineatus

) so will update as and when there is some progress.

Any thoughts greatfully received.

Regards,

Darren

[Coryologist]

Greetings Darren. I would venture to guess that your 6 to 8 week old fish are not laying eggs. While I used to believe that it took a year for most Corys to reach sexual maturity, I have found 9 months to be a more realistic figure. I have never witnessed any group of Corys spawn in under 7 months and I don't think you will find many, if any, Cory keepers who claim to have documented any spawns in less than that time frame.

Just my 2¢. I'd be curious to see what others have to say on the subject. Cheers. - Frank

[mummymonkey]

The small species (hastatus etc.) will spawn from around 6 months. Other than that 9 - 12 months seems to be typical with a few species keeping you waiting much longer.