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I have a question regarding minimum number of cory's to a tank. I've read everything from 1-12. It seams to me that the size of the tank would be how you would figure how many would be the minimum. Something like a small 5 gallon may only be able to hold two corries but in a 10 gallon two wouldn't be enough. Am I pretty much on the right track here?

The size of the tank will, naturally, limit the upper number of Corys (or indeed any other fish) that you can keep.

However, Corys are schooling fish, so they like to be in a group. In the wild, they tend to be in fairly large schools, many dozens of fish in one school. So, essentially "the more the merrier".

For most schooling fish, the minimum number is three - anything less isn't a proper school.

Corys don't need a whole lot of space, so unless you go for some of the really big ones, you should be OK with having a group of 3 in even a 5 gallon tank - you may not have much "free space" for other fish, but that's a different story.

I would however recommend that you look at the smaller forms of corydoras, such as




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Mats

Would a pair of albino's work? I can't really get anything smaller other than panda's and I've read they are week. I have 4 glofish in the tank and it has 10 gallon filtration. I really would like a bottom feeder and scavenger

Why can't you get anything else?

Albino cory's are generaly , which isn't exactly the smallest of Corys.

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Mats

I can get blackfin, panda, leopard, bronze, peppered and albino. I also have a question for a 10 gallon I'm setting up. I'd like some cory catfish in this tank. It currently hold four glofish and a flame dwarf gourami. What corries would be good and how many?

Ok, to start with the different corys you can get: Bronze and Albino are the same species (there are, technically, other species of Cory that come as Albino, but 90% or moer is C. aeneus -> Bronze cory). These grow to 75mm SL.

Leopard => most likely [Usually called C. julii in the shops]. 55mm SL.
Peppered => . 70mm SL.
Panda => 50mm SL.

Not sure what "Blackfin" cory is [Searching for "black" in the Cat-eLog doesn't come up with anything that would be a likely match... Try to ask your shop for a scientific name].

The other factor to consider is the temperature of the tank, besides size of the fish.

Temperature NOT considered, I would choose the C. panda to go in a 5 gallon tank. As long as the tank is well established (cycled) they aren't that sensitive, from what I understand - but the are perhaps a little bit less sturdy than the almost bulletproof C. aeneus and C. paleatus

As to what you can have in a 10g, you could have any of those above species, but check what temperature range the Cat-eLog lists for the species and match that with what you've got the 10g set at.

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Mats

That would be the "blackfin cory"
I have in the 10 gallon:
1 Male Flame Dwarf Gourami
4 Glofish

Now I was thinking of getting leopard cory catfish for this tank, would 3 be okay? I was also going to add 2 Otocinclus for algae cleanup

Mod Edit: Changed URL into persistant clog-link. --Mats

3 C. trilineatus should be fine in that tank.

I'd try to keep more than two Oto's too - they are another schooling fish that needs it's friends around to be happy. More is better...

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Mats

MatsP wrote:3 C. trilineatus should be fine in that tank.

I'd try to keep more than two Oto's too - they are another schooling fish that needs it's friends around to be happy. More is better...

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Mats

How many would you recommend?

I wouldn't recommend groups of less than six individuals. Corydoras are grupal species and they need the protection of the others, because its their only one defensive system.

Groups of Corys and Otos are "better the bigger", twenty is a great number. But reality of small tanks mean that you have to determine some sort of compromise... Three is the VERY minimum of any schooling fish - six as Jorge recommends is better. [I have some sort of superstitious notion that in a group of fish there's supposed to be an odd number, so I tend to buy either 3, 5, 7 or 9 etc. of some fish].

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Mats