PlanetCatfish.com

Hi,


I´m looking for new food for my Corys. Some People breed every Cory they get, so what is their secret?
One big point is the food I guess. The other conditions they use I don´t want to discuss here. My Interest is just focused on the food.

My questions are: What food do you use for the normal maintenance and what to get they spawn? Which dry food do you prefer if you use some?


Greetings,
Mathias

I believe most cory breeders use large amounts of live/frozen food. However, I don't think it's quite as simple as just the food. The water temperature, hardness/conductivity/pH are also factors - as well as picking the right time to "try". If you "try" too much, the fish will be stressed by you changing things around.

It is probably also a case of "experience" - if you know what to look for and how to treat a few different species, making a similar species breed wouldn't be too hard.

I can't really say I've noticed any direct relationship between feeding and spwaning, but I do notice that my C. sterbai seem to breed after water changes. Not every time, but now and again.

--
Mats

Hi,


I now that is not so simple to reduce it to to food.
It is completely clear that you have to do more than feed the fish. But that is not the stuff that I´m interesting in.

But my basic question is: What food do you use and why.

Mathias

Hi, I use a wide variety of foods as my corys are in my community tank, this is a list of what I have seen them eat.

Frozen and live - bloodworm, daphnia, brineshrimp.
Tablets - Hikari Micro wafers, Algae wafers, Mini pellets, Nutrafin bloodworm pellets, algae pellets, BCUK Brine shrimp pellets, JBL catfish pellets, JBL Novo Tabs and Novo Fect.
General - Tetra Prima, JBL Novo Grano Colour, i'm sure they get a bit of flake every now and then too.

They are a group of 6 C.sterbai, and they will breed every time if I perform a colder water change with pure RO (my local water is very hard), and they will spawn occasionally with a cooler water change using just tap water.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: Just seen your follow up post, I use the food above because its a mix of what people generally suggest for corys and also because my corys eat bits ment for others too. I have not intentionally tried to breed these guys, just stumbled across the RO trigger when softening the water for some of the tanks other inhabitants a while back.

And let me just explain that I said what I said, because it's easy to fall into the trap of believing that it's ONE thing that makes fish breed. They need good and varied nutrition - I don't think it's really important what form that is (dry, live, frozen, freshly killed, etc). I do believe that there are several factors, including good feeding, that makes fish breed. And it may not be the same "trick" for all species either. Wild-caught fish tend to be more difficult to breed in general - the theory is that they need more of the right trigger to breed - where the captive bred generations loose this strong tie to the natural cycles, and will often breed "at any time, under a wider range of water conditions".

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Mats

To answer the actual question:

The corys that I have kept in the past have had a diet mainly consisting of Tetra Prima (Tetra Discus, Tetra ColorBits - same thing in different countries), JBL Novotabs and JBL NovoPlec (the latter isn't intended for the corys - in cory only tanks I wouldn't add this food - but I don't keep corys on their own in any of my tanks). Sometimes a bit of frozen food and in some cases freeze-dried tubifex. Of the corys I've kept, I've successfully bred C. sterbai and C. metae. I also have had eggs from either C. weitzmanni or C. similis - not sure which one as they were kept together in the same tank, and the eggs didn't hatch. I currently have C. sterbai fry, and I have groups of C. metae, C. weitzmanni and C. concolor.

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Mats

Hi,


@Mats:

I totally agree with you!

I just want to know which food the users here use. Nothing else. That should not be a discussion about the general things in breeding Corys.



Mathias

Of course, some time in the future, we should be able to answer that question with statistics from the breeding logs, as that contains food information.

--
Mats

I really like Tropical Welsi gran (http://www.tropical.com.pl/welsigran,d81,0,en.html)

and Tropical Supervit granulat
(http://www.tropical.com.pl/supervitgran ... ,0,en.html)

Most of my cats seem to really like this and do show a marked preference. I tend to use it more for the smaller and slightly more fussy feeders.

New Life Spectrum and live worms when I am aiming for breeding.

I think live worms, cultured White or Grindal worms or live black worms seem to help make breeding Corydoras much easier.
I rely on live black worms and earth worm sticks for the average size Corydoras.
I use chilled newly hatched brine shrimp for breeding the Pygmy Corydoras species and to a lesser degree, earth worm sticks and live black worms.

I fed my spawning group of Corydoras duplicareus Hikari Bloodworms and live California Blackworms. Feeding of live blackworms always preceded spawning.

Korsaaven wrote:I fed my spawning group of Corydoras duplicareus Hikari Bloodworms and live California Blackworms. Feeding of live blackworms always preceded spawning.

And after a large water change I bet.
My feeble attempts to breed Corydoras duplicareus all went awry. I would get some eggs but my eggs rarely hatched. I admit I wasn't paying enough attention to them but at least I used mostly RO water with a little tap water mixed in. I had the same trouble with Corydoras C-121 which I really liked.

apistomaster wrote: And after a large water change I bet.
My feeble attempts to breed Corydoras duplicareus all went awry. I would get some eggs but my eggs rarely hatched. I admit I wasn't paying enough attention to them but at least I used mostly RO water with a little tap water mixed in. I had the same trouble with Corydoras C-121 which I really liked.

Corydoras duplicarues is my very first succesful corydoras spawning and hatching. my duplicareus spawning didnt always correlate with a water change or drop of temperature. one time they spawned when there was a brief heat spell. it happened always when i shifted from bloodworms to live blackworms. egg fertility in my duplicareus colony isnt high. but i found success in egg hatching and fry viability when i shifted hours-old to 1 day old eggs to 100% RO water unmixed with with tap water. apparently the eggs can handle a drastic pH change from ~7.0 to ~5.0. I also had to wipe the sides of the hatching container of bacterial film a day before the hatching. eggs and fry were kept at a temperature of 75- 78 F. and as soon as they hatched i dropped sand from the main tank. as noted in my thread the fry can survive on hikari first bites and without a week of water change if the tank is cycled.

I have 2 plump C121 females (they were contaminants in the shipment) but no males and im in the lookout for males so I can breed them too.

I feed my Corys, Bloodworms, Blackworms, Daphnia, and a variety of sinking tablets and sticks.

Mark