PlanetCatfish.com

No, no colour yet and they can turn out either way. Their brownish dots and baby marks are fading slowly so there is a small bit of a progress. It's just nice to have a record of it.
The younger batch is growing different sizes. There are a few bigger and a few smaller. I still can't tell how many in total and quite a few are albinos from them.I can't have more than 30 altogether, because the amount of empty shells I counted after they hatched was about 25-ish. Next time if I grow any they are staying in the breeder box for a couple of weeks. I think some of them are just not as good finding food in that size tank no matter how hard I try to spread it around. I watched them when they were smaller and they kept swimming around the same spot for ages even if there was some food a few centimeters away. When in the breeder box, the babys seem to grow faster and all of them to the same size. At least all seem to be happy and I haven't found any dead ones.

you'd think they would grow faster in a bigger space.

Logically yes, but in my experience it's not exactly true. A breeder box with a constant flow from the main tank is perfect for the first couple of weeks and can provide plenty of food at all times with 0 water quality issues even if you overfeed because the excess food will not create the slightest problems(I just used to flush mine into the main tank). It's a lot easier to pollute a small tank than a small breeder box inside a big tank drawing fresh water from the tank at all times. Then once that critical period is over, I think it's better to move them to a bigger and well cycled tank of course.

Just an update for the curious bunch of you

Small video of one of the corys 3 weeks and 5 days old. The video goes blurry in the middle but clears up towards the end:



And a picture:

I noticed today one of them seems to have a very very faint laser line:





And one of the two week old ones:

Nice! I think baby cories are so cute..

I absolutely adore corys of all ages, can't get enough of them
The adults spawn constantly, probably once every 5 days and for the record I've never done a cold water change. In my personal experience the stronger the flow and more aeration in the tank, the more they spawn. I just have to figure out how to spawn just the lasers but I've never seen my two females laying eggs yet or even joining the group in any way when the rest spawn but they are very plump so it may not be too far off. Regardless,looks like the male lasers prefer blondes

There surely is something like a laser line but then again I haven't raised bronze corys so I have no idea what they look like when young.
It's visible near the head, the rest is so faint that I can only see it from an angle. I don't know if the line will develop or not, only time will tell but it surely looks orange. Here are a few pictures taken two days ago:

4 weeks 4 days old cory:


2 weeks 5 days old cory youngsters:


6 weeks 4 days old albino:

A short video, not great but if you watch full screen you can see a bit. I was doing a water change and they got excited.



And a few pictures from today(4 weeks 6 days old)

More pictures

I mixed up the dates in the previous post which I corrected. The corys are 5 weeks 4 days old today and updated pictures from today below:

progressing nicely.

They don't look like much yet, neither bronze nor laser corys but they are very cute looking I suppose it can change in time but the bronze corys I've seen look quite different. Their grow out/permanent tank is setup and ready, I moved out all the livebearers and I've got just a few pygmies and sterbai corys in there at the moment. When I was changing the substrate to sand in that tank I found 9 platy tiny babies. I really don't want them but what can I do....so they've joined the baby cory tank.
I am still not sure how many baby corys I've got but I haven't lost any and I think I've counted at least 25. Unfortunately they are still all different sizes. I am going to give all the albino babies away and keep the hybrids for myself and my older albino baby is adorable. He/she hasn't stopped racing around the tank in hyperactive mode for weeks so I may keep him too

A tank disaster. Washed the filter sponge(in tank water) and 2 hours later ammonia!!! Moved about 10 corys, including the older ones to my other tank. It was some effort to catch the little buggers. I stressed the hell out of them too, especially the last one. It's in shock. Did a large water change and dosed up on Prime on the baby tank. I hope it catches up fast as it will end up killing the little things and my shrimp.

So far no casualties and it seems back on track. Stupid sponge filter. I am going to put a second sponge eventually.

I put a second filter I had spare running in another tank. I can't risk washing a filter to cause spikes anymore.

As for my hybrids, at the moment besides the orange looking fins, the corys do look like bronze variation. I am wondering sometimes if my corys are not bronze from my albinos and the large amount of infertile eggs was the result of the interbreeding attempts instead, and I don't have hybrids, but bronze corys?

Here are a few bad quality pictures but I can't take any better in the other tank as they've got more places to hide.

too cool! i breed corys also. orange lasers and trilineatus. i use a 5 gal. tank for the eggs. i remove them from the spawning tank with my fingers and roll them on the glass of the 5. to move the fry after hatching i use a piece of airline tubing and siphon them all into a 5 qt. ice cream bucket.then i just dump them in the fry 10.gal. tank. i use tubing again to siphon out the bigger ones to the ice cream bucket and int the 10 gal. grow out tank. i have 150 trilineatus juvies for sale! it works for me. my orange lasers are only 2 mos. out of peru. they have spawned once for me, 12 fish 137 eggs; apprex.95 to100 fry. but try the tubing. u will kill less fish.

They are now too big for airline tubing so I had to use the net. And I haven't lost any by moving them. But yes, I did siphon out some albinos by accident while cleaning the sand when they were small and then siphoned them back into the tank It's a great tool to move small cory babies.

Below is a video of the ones I moved to the bigger tank. There's about 8 "bronze" ones including the 3 older ones and 3 ablinos, including the 2 months old one. The rest of the corys you can see were original inhabitants, 5 sterbai and 3 pygmies. In the baby fry tank there's about 20-ish cory babies so the amount I can count increases

And one more video. Turn off the sound!!! My dog is whining for her tennis ball

And a picture I took with the camera flash. Just noticed that it does show a faint laser line actually. When I look at the corys from a distance, they just look like they've got something orangie near their back but I can't make up a line except for on pictures.

Just a note, but albino aeneus are true albinos. Two albino parents can't produce normally colored fry. The genes just aren't there. I would think a large portion of the eggs being infertile could come from either of two options, or both.

First, lasers seem notorious for a high rate of infertile eggs till they reach a certain age. All of the ones I've spawned were wild caught, so I have no idea what that age is. They just eventually started getting higher hatch rates.

Second, being hybrids could also account for the infertility. It's hard enough for the genetics of two critters of the same species to create something viable. Even the least glitch can cause fatal problems for a developing embryo.

Larry

OK, that's interesting. I always thought that albinos can throw bronze corys too but as you say mine never did before the laser corys. The lasers are not very old, they were nearly babies when I got them in March this year. But the eggs I collected weren't theirs, first because I was collecting the eggs while the albino females laid them, otherwise they were getting eaten by the clown loaches and then gold lasers are supposed to have orange eggs I thought, these were all white.

And the "bronze/laser" corys are growing way faster than the albino babies from what I can tell.

All of the cory eggs I've ever collected, including all the laser types, look the same aside from size. As for the lasers spawning, it's likely still too early for any females to have matured enough. I don't know when they mature, but they wilds I've kept usually took several months after getting them at nearly adult size. Given the video posted earlier in the thread, I'm fairly confident what you have are hybrids. Interesting from a anecdotal/information standpoint, but definitely should not be released into the hobby in order to prevent diluting the gene pool. I'm only mentioning this because the feel I've gotten from the last couple posts seems that your resolve in the earlier posts to maintain them for information purposes seems to have depleted a bit. Likewise, I'm interested in seeing how they mature due to curiosity. I'm just hopeful you don't let curiosity kill the cat.

Larry

I am definately keeping all the hybrids. I've got 3 tanks to spread them around thankfully with one of them mostly dedicated. I was just thinking loud whether they are indeed hybrids as I can't really tell by the markings. I haven't had bronze corys growing, that's why.
And then judging by my own experience, there are hybrids out there already I am certain of it, as it really took no effort on my part and if I wasn't there most of the time to see what happened, then I may not have known. There are bronze corys that look just like mine, including under the bronze cory section on this website:

http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/im ... ge_id=7529

I'm not so much concerned about them being called bronze. I'm fairly confident that most of the fish sold as bronze are a mix of multiple species. I still wouldn't pass along known, or suspected, hybrids. My concern lies more with the lasers since those are still primarily WC fish. If they fry start showing traits of the line, I would be worried about someone unknowingly trying to cross them into that species. Regardless, I'm glad to know you still plan to keep and isolate them.

Larry

I understand that. But these can't be mistaken for gold laser corys. However, many of the aeneus corys on the market are showing traits of laser lines and are labelled as schultzei, or bronze, or gold shoulder, or whatever...so someone is already selling hybrids I think.
If I was going to sell them under different names, I wouldn't be banging about it on a public forum, so I am not the problem really and not the beginning of it either

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how they turn out as a final look. They are fairly healthy ones for sure, eat and grow like pigs which to me is the most important thing at the moment.

in the last photo you posted, i can see a laser line. if that is one of the babies then you do have the hybrids.

Yes, that's one of the babies. They grow extremely fast for some reason. Even the younger ones have surpassed all the albinos and the older 3 have outgrown their albino half sibling which is 2 weeks older than them, and are actually as big as my sterbai corys who I have for maybe 6 months
The strange part is that the laser line is more like a very orange shoulder line when normally looking at them but it's clearly visible with the camera flash.
After all the informative comments I am pretty certain these are hybrids, couldn't have had them if it were just the albinos and not to mention that I keep seeing them interbreeding once or twice a week. They don't stop and the laser males look to have taken over althogether. The two laser females are fat as pumpkins and no one wants to know about them

This is how my adult lasers look with the flash. A female and a male posing They don't look much alike the albino/laser offspring.

Another bad quality video. You can see one of the 7 and a half weeks old hybrid and 2 younger hybrids

Just thought I'd update but there's nothing new really.
Just that the albino corys are either slow growing compared to the bronze/laser hybrids, or the hybrids are just too fast growing.
The other interesting thing I noticed is what chameleons fish can be.
The bronze/laser hybrids assume quite a different colour on the different substrates. I thought the difference is because of the reflection of the substrate and different light, my camera but it turns out it isn't. I had to move some babies around from the fry tank which has white sand to the grown up tank which has black sand and it's amazing how different the exact same corys look. The ones that were kept on white sand are obviously lighter coloured and it takes them at least a couple of weeks to darken up once moved to black sand.

The video below is of one of the corys that was moved from white to black substrate. I think he's been in this tank just a couple of days at the time the video was taken. You can see it to the left in the beginning of the video, complete contrast to his brothers and sisters on the right of the tank and second half of the video, which have been in this tank for a lot longer. They can be confused for different corys almost



And another video of the fry tank whith lighter coloured corys for better comparison since most the videos above show how dark they become on the black sand.

Just one more short video: