baby cories in community tank - what to do now?

[sophia35]

I just got back from being out of town for a few days, and left the aquarium light off but the room light on. When we turned on the light, we have seen at least two baby cories, maybe half-inch long. (I went away for a long weekend in May, and we had one baby when we returned. It's grown up now. I think when the light's off for a few days, the other fish don't see them to eat them? They must grow extremely fast, or I just hadn't noticed them before.)

Besides the babies, I have 4 bronze cories, 4 peppered cories, and also danios, blood-fin tetras and black-skirt tetras. The babies are too big for any of those to swallow, I think. It's a 50-gallon tank.
Anyway, I don't have room to set up another tank, but they have plenty of cover - lots of java fern, plus aquarium ornaments with places to hide, etc.
I don't know if I need to feed them anything special since they are doing fine so far on their own. At what size do they eat regular foods; should I run out and get something different? My main concern is I need to do a water change, but I don't know how many babies are in there, and I'm afraid to vacuum one up. They are so small and kind of blend in, plus I usually go around the base of the decorations with the vacuum. Should I just try to suck out the water from the middle of the tank and not vacuum the substrate? It won't be as clean, but better than nothing.

[Sweety]

Like yourself I had a couple cory's hatch in my tank but the odds were stacked against them as I had 3 breeding pairs of angle in the tank plus tetras, RT shark all could have eaten the fry but they made it to adulthood I just fed my fish as normal flake & catfish pellets & the fry must have got enough food. I did my normal water changes hoovering the sand but the water went into a white bucket which I carefully checked before emptying out just incase I had sucked up one of the little ones

[MatsP]

Once they reach around 1cm/0.5", they are usually OK to live with adult fish unless the adult fish is REALLY big.

--
Mats

[MChambers]

As far as vacuuming goes, you could put some sort of cloth or filter floss over the end of the tube, or you could simply not vacuum the bottom, as you suggest.

I agree that juvies as big as you describe should be fine with regular food.

[sophia35]

Thank you! they seem to be doing well.