PlanetCatfish.com

Hi

I have recently stocked my cycled tank with a pearl gourami , 8 cardinals and 4 Corydoras reticulatus.

Everybody appears really happy and getting along really well. I am so pleased I went for corys instead of a plec as they are just great, and really pleased with Corydoras reticulatus as they are so beautiful! So much fun, great lines on fins and body, and swim around like little sharks!

They have only been in for three days but they dont seem interested in food. They play constantly in the currents and at feeding time my Pearl (greedy bugger! ) and the cardinals all love it but the corys just ignore it.

Ive fed tubiflex, flakes, catfish sinking pellets and frozen bloodworm and they dont show any interest at all! Plus Pearly is so greedy that he comes down and statrts eating the tablets, as do the cards.

Is this just becasue they are knew and will eat when ready - Im worried i'm over feeding the tank just tring to get some left over food for when the corys feel like eating!

Thanks for any replies, Im a newbie so paranoid that they get what they want

Pic of the gang!

Try to skip feeding one day and then only feed about a third as much as you have been. Begin this immediately after making a 50% water change and then report back on the results.

Mine did the same thing, But mine seem to love the Hikari carnivorus sinking pellets. It has a really strong smell and heard on the forum that they eat by smell so that stinky catfood smell you get when you open the bag is what gets their attention. Mine also like the Tetra min Variety wafers. But most of all give them time it took about a week for my little ones to get into the routine, and a month to find out what they like to eat. But keep up with the water changes about 25% each week not to shock the pearl, they are sensitve to enviroment changes and clean any uneaten food daily if nessary. And relax when they are hungry they will let you know (mine do).

Thanks for the advice! I think I have mastered it!
Came in from work today and they looked like they may be up for some grub (dont ask me how - i just had the feeling) I put half a pellet in the normal place (open up hatch and drop in so falls at the front of the tank) and as usual the corys went to the back and decided to play in the currents!

Then I had a brain wave and lifted the lid and put a tab at the back behing the bogwood where they chill out. Now they are chowing down! I thinhk like you say they take a few days to settle in and also I think they felt too exposed to feed at the front of the tank.

I guess I knew i was worring about nothing but when your brand new it is good to hear that you are right!

Corylover,
That was good advice you gave, especially to relax. Sometimes new aquarists are an anxious lot.
I would really recommend black or tubifex, live worms if she was in the USA. Don't know whether they are available in GB.
Another good substitue is a small portion of finely minced ordinary garder variety earthworm as an enticing food. Very, very finely minced.

She? Are you talking about me? Lucky im safe in my sexuality!

Please accept my apologies, SIR, and I hope your Corys adjust well. I guess I put my foot in my mouth never happened before. LOL.
One thing to discuss is that Corydoras vary quite a bit in their behaviors.
Some see always out and about grubbing every crevice for bits of food and are not shy.
Then there many that hold to cover and are very cautious about coming out in the open. The different species all have their little quirks, especially the wild caught Corys which is whar yours are.
The most common tank bred varieties have become used to aquarium life and aren't worrying about some Heron or other predator to grab them.

I've experienced the same regarding the shyness of wild-caught cories. As I enter the room my Robineae shoot to the back of their tank. But if you persist with feeding at the front of the tank, in the same spot, you can 'train' them. They return to the front in seconds to feed and also to perch in a row on their favourite bogwood.

Now that I have two tanks of cories to compare, I'm noticing some intriguing differences. The ones in the new quarantine tank do not live with Danios and their eating habits are completely different from the ones who do. The ones living with Danios eat like Danios--meaning they will eat floating food at the top of the tank and will eat ANYTHING and I mean ANYTHING that I offer that tank.

The new fish are much more finicky. They eat only at the bottom, except for some of the baby pandas, who learned how to get at floating food if it made its way to the glass and stick to the glass. And it was only after a couple of the pandas started doing this that the older cories caught on. They didn't really do much with the algae wafer. Hikari micro foods barely got their attention and I had to vac it out. They did like rehydrated blood worms, though, but had to learn from watching the pandas how to get at them...either that or wait till I stirred the water to get the worms to sink. I was shocked that my two new peppers didn't know what to make of my menu for a good many days. They are the oldest and so I would have thought they would have spent more of their life sampling food than the "toddlers" and "babies" of the tank. These peppers are at least a year old if I go by the information on the other topic about determining approximate ages of peppered cories.

Flake foods seem to be all that they understood initially--except the panda cory babies. I can't wait to see if living with the danios in the main tank will turn them into eager eaters like their counterparts in that tank are.

hellocatfish,

I'm sure they will be more comfortable and feel secured since you will make each species group bigger once you combine the tanks. Except the one lone Elegen. I hope you can find more of them and add to your main tank also.
Your way of adding same species of Corys is next best thing to do beside getting big group(6+) from the start.
I hate seeing some people keeping one of this and that.

Unfortunately I am probably already overstocked with what I currently have. Actually, I'm CERTAIN I'm overstocked and have way too many cories for one forty US gallon tank--especially if you take into account their anticipated sizes at maturity. I know that I'll have to be VERY patient and gradual going about the transfer of the cories from quarantine to the main tank. I seem to have a stable nitrogen cycle in both tanks and I want to ensure it stays that way.

However, most of my cories, especially the newest ones, are very small babies. The panda cories are the smallest cories I have ever seen--half of them are not even a full centimeter in length. The baby aeneus are barely larger than that, and the sterbas are also small. Only the 2 peppers have any size to them and they are the largest of ALL the fish I have. Even my original stock isn't as old as these new peppers.

I don't intend to add any more stock unless I lose any members of the quarantine tank.

My big "mistake" this time around was to fall in love with and impulse buy the panda cory shoal. I went there intending to get just 2 sterba cories and 2 peppers. Next thing I know I'm asking for the 4 panda babies and wondering just how stupid and immature I can possibly be. If I hadn't done that, then I could have given the Elegans a school of her own. However, she schools with the aeneus and seems very happy.

Still, I don't have any regrets getting the pandas. By the time the babies have grown enough to really crowd the tank, the second 40 gallon tank I plan to install should be in place to receive them & any of the other cories that prefer the cooler temperatures they like. Now that I have pandas I'm not going to let myself be without them ever again for as long as I am able to keep cories at all. They are every bit as captivating as I have heard them described.

Whoops...did I say half of my pandas are not even a full centimereter in length? Yeesh! No, they are not fry. What was I thinking when I typed THAT? A centimeter between markings, maybe. I think they are a little under TWO centimeters, the smaller ones anyway.