Breeding attempt for habrosus

[JamesFish]

I love the look of the little Cory and feel it would make a great breeding project. My first attempts failed to settle them. Now I have a group of 7 left alone with some Ember tetra in an 18" with ceramic media for any little ones to hide in. No joy so took a read back here.

Kept the media piled up on one side pebbles along the back and bog wood on the right with nana planted all round. Switched to lower power air pump and took one air driven filter out. The substrate is sand. Now planning over holidays to do 10% daily water changes. I don't have rain water and being next to m25 not sure they would like it. Should it be enough or should I attempt to soften water with RO or a kit I have that should recharge back with a salt mix?

Tank shot

Clearing

I did a 50 wc yesterday tonight 5 are very active up and down the glass but can see no eggs

[MarcW]

I have tried keeping a group of 45

Corydoras habrosus

and struggled with them, I quarantined them for 8 weeks and they were fine, after moving them to a larger tank they died off one by one and were all gone after a few weeks. I have no idea what caused it, there were no external signs of anything being wrong. And all other fish in the tank were fine, and still are. Maybe their size makes them more sensitive to parasites or water issues.

To soften the water I would recommend using RO water, depending on the hardness of your tap water you can just mix RO with tap water to achieve softer water so long as you have a TDS meter or some other way of confirming the softness of the mixed water. I do this for my tanks, mix my 300ppm pH7.8 to 8 tap water with RO to achieve 70-80ppm TDS and a pH of around 6.5.

If your tap water is soft then you may be better using a re-mineralising treatment, but ensure that it is designed for freshwater fish not a marine salt mix.

There is an article here: https://www.planetcatfish.com/shaneswor ... cle_id=235 about breeding them, and a few breeding reports on the species page too.

Good luck

[Jobro]

These fish are really shy and it is best to leave them alone as much as possible. They will breed if you just feed them well and keep them in softer water. I would not recommend doing big waterchanges. Rather smaller ones. Good aeriation and a stronger current will help. With your setup, I would try to provide some shelter in the middle of the tank with some bogwood or rocks or an echinodorus, because they are shy and like to hide. Hiding fish might not be an optimum for you as a keeper but the fish prefer their privacy

Removing the ember tetras might be a good option. They might eat your eggs before you even notice they spawned. They will spawn most likely between the anubias leafs and it might be hard for you to spot the eggs. I found my first habrosus fry before I ever saw an egg. Would be a shame if your habrosus spawn but you never see any offspring because the tetras eat them all.

whether you need RO water or not depends on the hardness of your tap water

[JamesFish]

Following advice I have left them alone. The 7 of them are now the only fish in the tank. Kind of sad but given the small size of the fish I feel I don't need to be in the tank changing water or cleaning the filter as much.

Have topped up the water today from another tank with low nitrates and lower PH so hopefully the water will soften on its own over time. If not will try and get some RO to mix in.

They do however seem rather bold now sitting right up the front the tank at times and swimming up and down one end panel on the left.

Will keep leaving them alone for a while longer see what happens a friendly update for anyone else trying.

[Tetranerd]

Try live food. I had a huge colony 30+ dwindle down to about 10. In fact I have them in two tanks. One group in big tank seems to be ok (about 10 also)

I feed live black worms and they have fattened up quite a bit. I agree species only seems to work best with them. I keep cherry shrimp with them.

They will spawn, but food seems to be the key after a years plus keeping them.