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Symptoms / Problem description

Hi, I noticed some of my cories are twitching and scratching vigorously. Not always but just once a while for about 2 secs or so each time.

Other than that, no other unusual symptoms or behaviors are seen.

Anyone know what's wrong with them?
Please advise. Thanks!
Any medication needed?

Water parameters
a) Temperature range. - ard 81F
b) pH - 6.8 - 7.0
c) GH - unknown
d) KH - unknown
e)Ammonia - 0, Nitrite - 0, Nitrate - 20
f) Water change frequency - 25% weekly

Tank set up
a) Size. - 20g
b) Substrate. - No
c) Filtration. - Eheim 2213 and sponge filter
d) Furnishings. - Ceramic pot
e) Other tank mates. - No tankmates inside. Only 12 x 1.5inches cories
f) How long has it been set-up? - 9 months

Action taken (if any)
None

Medications used (if any)
None

What species of cories are they? A temp of 81'F is a little bit on the warm side for many of the cories, but may be fine for what you have - depends on what it is.

As to the scratching, a little bit of scratching is normal. A lot of it is not. Now the difficult question is "how much is a lot"... If it's "more than normal", then it's usually an indication of either a parasitic or fungal skin infection of some sort. Try to make a closer observation to see if you can see any indications. If not, it's going to be hard to alleviate.

--
Mats

Thanks for the reply.
Those that show the symptoms are c.aeneus (albino) and brochis splenden.

As for the scratching, I'm not sure how often they do it but it appears only recently.

Those 12 of them are with me for almost 9 months. All are eating and breeding well.

So, will a few drops of melafix help to alleviate the problem?

I would advise reducing the temperature by at least 6ºF. although the C. sterbai do enjoy warmer temperatures they don't actually need to be kept that high.

Have you introduced any live plants in the last couple of weeks?

Ian

Nope, no new fishes or plants added in the past few months.

I will be installing two more fans to the tank to further reduce the temperature.
Could the temperature be one of the cause?

My cories are mainly feeding on hikari pellets (algae wafer/cory pellet/lionhead pellet), frozen bloodworm and chopped market prawn.
Anything wrong here also?

Can you get your nitrates a bit lower? Mine get a bit twitchy when nitrates climb much over 10. Is your substrate pretty clean? You may need to do a partial gravel vac--don't do the whole tank all at once though because stirring up the mulm too much makes them twitchy, too. Too many organic pollutants in the substrate can feed bacteria and parasites that cause irritation and illness--at least from what I've seen. I've had this happen to me a few times when I had dead spots where there wasn't good flow over an area and poop and dead plant parts accumulated and I didn't take it out fast enough. I think I've got the tank arranged now to where all parts are getting aerated and filtered and good current. We'll see. If cleaning alone doesn't do the trick--then likely it's not the nitrate. And usually cleaning alone doesn't work and it seems once the fish are flashing, they seem to stay that way, so I use Jungle Buddies anti-parasite tablets with good results and little to no disruption of the biological filter. I think from the beginning some sort of gill parasite or pathogen was introduced into my tank from the LFS and from time to time if conditions get poor as I described, I get flareups in some of the cories. It seems most prominent in my green and albino aeneus cories so far. I think once you've ever had any kind of disease in your tank, some of it always remains waiting for an opportunity to re-establish itself. Especially the stuff that causes twitching and flashing.

Before I started using Jungle Buddies, twitchy flashing cories inevitably progressed to cories with red gills and then ended up dead cories. I haven't had any losses since. JB Anti Parasite contains acriflavine, praziquantel and some other chemical I can't quite name from memory.

Again, before anyone jumps to the assumption I'm always jungle-buddying my fish, please know I'm speaking from PAST experiences. It's been a long process of researching and yelling for help, and trial and error to keeping the tank maintained to the point where problems are few and far between. I know that once you get the environment just right, the need for medication will cease. It's just that sometimes for any number of reasons even an established tank will run into a problem if any sort of disruption occurs either naturally or caused by an intended change. In that case, it helps to know how to recover and preserve the fish's health until you fix the problems.