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Finally managed to convince my C. sterbai to lay some eggs a couple of days back.
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Mats

Congratulations! This species has always been a problem for me to convince to spawn, so I know this is no small feat even though some hobbyists just seem to have a magic touch with them.

Larry

Must say, I must have been lucky with mine - or it's simply that I got the ones that are captive bred already, so a little more "adpated" to captive breeding than the wild-caught ones. Or it's simply that some people has luck with some types of fish, and others have luck with other fish - I use the term luck rather loosely here - skill, talent or some other similar word may be at least as good.

What I did here was smply a fairly large water change (about 50%), which lowers the temperature by around 2'C (approx 4-5'F) and drop the TDS to just under 100. In the past, I've had a large group (not these fish!) lay 50+ eggs in a day. I have only captured about 20 eggs in this batch, and they didn't lay any more the next day, which the others used to do.

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Mats

very good, mine also used to lay after a big water change and a good feeding of bs and worms. cheers jk

Congrats and well done on the spawning MatsP and good luck with the eggs

Congrats Mats
Sterbai are lovely Cory's

I have a group of 25 corydoras Sterbai (F2 generation) in my large angelfish tank. I feed the angels heavily in that tank with live and frozen foods. TDS is about 150, 1 do a 50% waterchange twice a week. The Sterbai spawn about once a month in this setup. My only trouble is that I need diving gear to collect all of the eggs, since only some of the eggs are laid just underneath the watersurface on the glass....

Good luck with the fry!

Jools

Update: if you squint and use your imagination, you can just make out the eyes in the picture below.

And thanks Jools, I just siphoned out a bunch of mouldy ones, but the remaining look good, approximately 10. --
Mats

Mats, how big are the parents?

Parents are around 4-5cm/1.5-2" total length - not massive, but not tiny either.

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Mats

MatsP wrote:Parents are around 4-5cm/1.5-2" total length - not massive, but not tiny either.

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Mats

Thanks Mats

Mine are approaching this size. Do you think size is what determines if a cory can breed or do you think its more age related(if so what age)?

In general, it's more size than age - at least in my experience with some other fishes - if they don't get enough food to grow properly, they don't produce eggs...

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Mats

Fry just hatched: (And by gosh is it hard to photograph tiny fry - they are only about 5mm long and nearly transparent - the above is the best out of about 20 - and of course, they hide behind the silicon sealant...)

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Mats

I find C. sterbai do not have to be very old and large before they breed but when young breeders spawn their are far more infertile eggs. By the time the breeders are 2 or 3 years old the can produce hundreds of mostly fertile eggs.
These first early spawns resulting in a small number of fry at least provide us with more experience at how we rear fry which is then very handy to have on board when and if you choose to move to high production,

Hi Mats, good luck with the newly hatched fry, the last time I saved some eggs from being eaten only 2-3 fry hatched and soon perished.

I am now trying again, I have just saved 15 eggs this morning from my C.sterbai, and I'm hoping for more success.

Could you give us some more information about your methods please?

Did you put the eggs in a seperate tank or breeding box/net?

Once hatched what size tank are the fry in, and is there a filter, water changes or both? Any substrate?

What do you plan to feed once the yolk sac has been used up?

Thanks for sharing your knowledge and good luck rearing your fry.

They are currently in a "display tank" which sits on top of their parent's tank. I'm planning to move them into a fry net, probably tonight.

Previously, I've reared them completely in a fry net, but all my fry nets/boxes are still in my fishroom that my wife "looks after"...

I have in the past used "Liquifry For Egglayers" (which is the proper liquid food) for a few days, then moved onto ground up Tetra Bits and such. I probably have to get some of that on the way home tonight...

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Mats

Thanks for the advice. The eggs I rescued are currently in a breeding box, in my display tank. The last time they hatched I had run out of Liquifry and was probably feeding food which although crushed up was too big for them to begin with.

I will make sure I pick some up in the next few days.

Thanks again, and good luck with your fry.

I always fed my fry mikroworms and chilled newly hatched brine shrimp.
Mikroworms are very easy to culture and the fry grow faster on live food than prepared foods.

Unfortunately, not got any microworm or bbs. And the not-so-favourite shop that I went to this evening didn't have any baby-fry-food, so I ended up with some natural yoghurt as an emergency food... Can't be worse than not feeding them at all...

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Mats

Well done Mats,

C. sterbai fry are reasonably large so you could just take half a Tetra tabimin tablet and crush it up fine then wet it and mix it into a paste. This will sink to the bottom quickly and the fry will be picking on it straight away.

The use of liquid foods for most Corys are not necessary and can send water off quicker than anything. The fry are capable of taking larger morsels.

Another tip with C. sterbai is keep them warm, around 27ºC - 28ºC is what I used to keep and breed mine at. The cooler water change would get them going every time.

Ian

Thanks Ian. I may well give that a go - I think I have some tabimin sitting around somewhere.

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Mats

Last pictures before I put them in a breeding net (which makes it impossible to photograph).
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Mats

I have another bunch of eggs now, laid on Friday after Wednesdays water-change, about 15-20 that haven't fungused so far. Should hatch in the next couple of days.

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Mats

Hi Mats, my remaining two are now the size of the ones in your post on the 8th April. Did you have any luck getting them to take crushed regular food at that size?

I have been feeding mine Liquifry No.1 over the past few days but two died recently, so I would like to try moving on to crushed food as I have no idea if they are eating the stuff in Liquifry!

Mine are in a fry net, and I don't see them unless I start moving the net around, so I don't actually know. The net gets pretty dirty tho', which I think is actually a GOOD thing. I just put a few crumbs from the JBL NovoTabs, which are tiny bits (I didn't have any Tabimin, it turned out).

I do have some alder-cones in with my eggs...

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Mats

Thanks, I'll try some bits from NovoTabs. I also have some alder cones in the fry saver with mine (in there since the eggs were put in), on a thin 2-3mm fine sand base.

I had heard that they have mild anti fungal/bacterial properties, I'm not sure how effective they are but the two surviving fish is more than I had at this stage last time!

Thanks again for the info.

Maybe it helps - I raised my pandas on combination of Sera Micron, JBL NobilFluid Artemia and scraped frozen blood worms (scraped some once a day using knife, not cut but scraped to make it as fine as possible). This worked well in my case and it seemed to me that they really liked blood worms.