Corydoras Paleatus and Sterbai

[CarlDeller]

Hi all i'm Carl

I am new here and after using this forum for the past few weeks i decided to join. I Had bought 6

Corydoras Paleatus

6

Corydoras Sterbai

and had them all in my 40G show tank. After a few weeks i moved them all to a 10G in an attempt to have them breed.

Last week on tuesday i feed them around 9am and left for school. My classes were cancelled so i went back home to find about 150 eggs on my glass. I was happy. I grabbed a net breeder(which i had initially purchased for guppies) and counted has i was putting eggs in. After getting to 100 i figured i had enough and would soon have more spawning so i left the rest on the glass and waited. Later on after checking the forums I thought it would be a good idea to take 2 RCS and add them to the net to combat possible fungus. Later that evening when i saw they weren't still spawning i added a 500mL of ice to the tank in hopes the temperature drop would induce more spawning.

Around 2 hours later as i was about to call it a night i went to take a look at my eggs.....In horror I see 2 Corydoras Paleatus in my net breeder and no more eggs... I quickly fish them out and put them back in the general aquarium space, both my shrimps where swimming around the tank. After careful examination i noticed that 15 eggs had been spared because they were too difficult to reach.

When i added the cube of ice the water level went up higher than the limit of the net breeder and as corys like to jump up for air....a couple made it in and my RCS found a way out.

What i did next was make sure the water level was bellow the line and hope that they would be viable or that they would spawn again.

What happened next....a few days pass and some of the eggs turn white....none really turn brown except maybe 2. So what i did was grab the whole net and dump everything in my RCS tank. I figured first the cory tank will have better flow because the huge breeding net was taking up way too much space and second my shrimps would take care of the eggs and not eat the fry.

We are now Tuesday again.... 7 days have passed and I no longer see any eggs... and there aren't any fry.... I have 3

otocinclus macrospilus

and about 20 Red cherry shrimp in that tank.

Here are my questions.

Would

otocinclus macrospilus

or Red cherry shrimp eat my eggs or the fry ?

What are your suggestions ?

What did i do wrong ?

[Marine590622]

In answer to "What did I do wrong?"

12 corries of two different species in a 10 gallon. In 10 gallon I would not keep more then one species. Second the ideal temp for the two species are different. My sterbai spawned with a cool softer water change after being conditioned and kept at about 82 degrees

My pepper corries spawned with a cool softer water change after being conditioned and kept at about 70 degrees. I have my best luck just leaving the eggs in place and waiting. Cover the bottom of the tank with fine sand, and then put oak leaves in the tank as the leaf litter degrades the bio film that forms on the leaves is a fine source of first food for the fry, it also serves as a perfect hiding place for the fry. If you must collect the eggs and segregate them. You could construct spawning mops and float the mops in the corry tank. when you see eggs on the glass you can be pretty sure you will have eggs in the mops. remove the mops to a seperate hatching tank, with a sand bottom and oak leaves.

[CarlDeller]

In answer to "What did I do wrong?"

12 corries of two different species in a 10 gallon. In 10 gallon I would not keep more then one species. Second the ideal temp for the two species are different. My sterbai spawned with a cool softer water change after being conditioned and kept at about 82 degrees

My pepper corries spawned with a cool softer water change after being conditioned and kept at about 70 degrees. I have my best luck just leaving the eggs in place and waiting. Cover the bottom of the tank with fine sand, and then put oak leaves in the tank as the leaf litter degrades the bio film that forms on the leaves is a fine source of first food for the fry, it also serves as a perfect hiding place for the fry. If you must collect the eggs and segregate them. You could construct spawning mops and float the mops in the cory tank. when you see eggs on the glass you can be pretty sure you will have eggs in the mops. remove the mops to a separate hatching tank, with a sand bottom and oak leaves.

Could you post a few pictures of your setups i'm curious to see what else i could tinker with.

I have my best luck just leaving the eggs in place and waiting. Cover the bottom of the tank with fine sand, and then put oak leaves in the tank as the leaf litter degrades the bio film that forms on the leaves is a fine source of first food for the fry, it also serves as a perfect hiding place for the fry

Do you leave the parents with the eggs ? because my eggs didn't last a few hours with them let alone the 2-3 days for them to hatch.

Thank you for the reply i was losing hope

[Marine590622]

In answer to "What did I do wrong?"
...

Could you post a few pictures of your setups i'm curious to see what else i could tinker with.

...

Do you leave the parents with the eggs ? because my eggs didn't last a few hours with them let alone the 2-3 days for them to hatch.

Thank you for the reply i was losing hope

No problem on the reply, I am not the best at taking pictures, but I would be happy to try to. What is it you would like to see?

Do I leave the eggs with the adults? short answer is sometimes, long answer is, well really long, medium answer then.

I find that for whatever reason, if I handle the eggs of most any species, Rainbow fish, killi fish, mothbrooding cichlids, or corydoras catfish. the eggs tend to fungus. Because of this. techniques that others use with no problems often don't work for me. I often find I have to find different techniques then others to succeed with a species. In the last 5 years, I have spawned and submitted to my local club over 46 different species of fish. I have had many more spawns then this. I just started a thread on this forum about triggering spawns. I cover some of what worked for me in that thread.

But these days, when I work with a new species when I get a spawn, I have to determine what I will do with the spawn. If the fish spawned easily, I will usually try to leave things alone and see if the parents will raise the fry on their own, if the spawn was difficult to achieve, then I am more inclined to try to protect the spawn.

[CarlDeller]

No problem on the reply, I am not the best at taking pictures, but I would be happy to try to. What is it you would like to see?

Just you regular breeding aquarium for the corydoras. I'll post a picture of mine.

Do I leave the eggs with the adults? short answer is sometimes, long answer is, well really long, medium answer then.

I find that for whatever reason, if I handle the eggs of most any species, Rainbow fish, killi fish, mothbrooding cichlids, or corydoras catfish. the eggs tend to fungus. Because of this. techniques that others use with no problems often don't work for me. I often find I have to find different techniques then others to succeed with a species. In the last 5 years, I have spawned and submitted to my local club over 46 different species of fish. I have had many more spawns then this. I just started a thread on this forum about triggering spawns. I cover some of what worked for me in that thread.

But these days, when I work with a new species when I get a spawn, I have to determine what I will do with the spawn. If the fish spawned easily, I will usually try to leave things alone and see if the parents will raise the fry on their own, if the spawn was difficult to achieve, then I am more inclined to try to protect the spawn.

Are your rainbow fish Pseudomugil furcatus ?

I had removed all my eggs from the glass and put them in a breeder net but after the parents got into the net i was only left with like 8 which all fungus... if the 100 would of fungus i think i would of removed the parents instead. Next time they breed i'm planning on removing all the corys and leaving a few RCS in with the eggs.

[Marine590622]

I breed my corry's primarily in 10 gallon tanks. I have a small fish room in the basement. My first rack was a rack that a friend gave me along with a 55 gallon tank that just now gave up the ghost. From there I set up a rack that I built myself. That rack holds 18 tanks 16 10 gallons and 2 5 gallon tanks.

Here is a picture of that rack. Or at least the top level of that rack. The 10s are setup end out.

My son says the fishroom looks like a meth lab, but you can see from the shot the top row of 6 tanks
The row below is also partially viewable. that row holds 5 10s and a 5 as dose the bottom row. My first rack and I forgot to allow for the width of the support pillars when I designed it it was originally intended to hold 18 10s.

[Marine590622]

Here are some shots looking into the end of the tanks.

as you can see I keep the tanks stuffed.

[Marine590622]

Some more shots.

To set up tanks like this and be able to work with the fish, the plants are either free floating, tied off to rock or wood, or planted in planters. I have a number of bus tubs so when I want to work in a tank, I take an empty tub, pull all the structure out and place it in a tub. If I am going to be awhile I will syphon some tank water into the tub to keep the plants wet. Next time I do I will take a picture of that process.

[Marine590622]

Basically in a tank that crowded, the fish usually leave their eggs alone.

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Here are some shots looking into the end of the tanks........Basically in a tank that crowded, the fish usually leave their eggs alone.

Perfect tanks, and you get more biofilm, rotifers etc. in tanks with plenty of plants, dead leaves and structure.

cheers Darrel

[CarlDeller]

Wow your fish room is very impressive. If you lived around here i'd be really honored to take a look around your shop.

Are you a fish breeder or own a Fish store ?

How do you remove the un-eaten food ?


The day before yesterday i noticed a few females with the fins in a cup shape after i did a water change(warmer water). I was feeding them heavily on blood worms,tubifex and spirulina. Around midnight i laid on the floor looking at them swim. Around 2 am i woke up....still on the floor and closed the light to the fish tank. Temp was 27.4C. I had no eggs on the glass. I didn't want them to spawn yet since i wanted to be there to see them and possibly remove some eggs or the parents to raise the fry.

Today 2 days later. After feeding them a few bloodworms and tubifex i decided it would be a good time to have them breed seeing as i'll be home all day and could keep an eye on them.

Tank temp is 25C i had feed them around 13:00 and it was 18:00. I did a 50% water change with R/O water at temperature of about 11C after adding the water the tank temp was at 17.4C at this point i decided to unplug my heater and let them cool for awhile. At that point they hid into the wooden cave and there was no movement. After half an hour i returned to see them still immobile. The temp was at 18C so i turn the heater back on and decided to give them another feeding. This time 1 bloodworm cube,1 brine shrimp cube and 1 daphnia cube.

Here is what i am unsure about:

Should I have used R/O water ? that tank usually has tap water with a moderate hardness and neutral pH

Should I have left the heater off or on ?

Should I have waited until another rain storm ?

Should I have turned on the bubble wall to help oxygenate the tank ?

Should I have waited for lights off or another time in the day ?

I don't care which species breeds first either paleatus or sterbai i just want to see if i can make them breed.

Thank you

[CarlDeller]

Quick update.

My

Corydoras Paleatus

have spawn and after careful examination i think only 1 or 2 of my females participated. I had to take the corys out of the tank after the spawn was over since they had already started to eat the eggs. They spawned wednesday. The eggs haven't changed color yet.

As far as i can tell the

Otocinclus

don't eat the eggs and the RCS don't bother them either.

I think my ratio of male to female is way off I've posted a topic with pictures

[Marine590622]

Carl, first off congratulations on the spawn.
"...
Are you a fish breeder or own a Fish store ?

How do you remove the un-eaten food ? "

I am a hobbyists here in Madison, I am also a member of our local fish club. I really ramped up my fishkeeping in answer to some health issues.

As far as uneaten food, I don't remove any as the foods I feed are fine in the tank if not eaten immediately. Repashy gel foods, black, white, and grindal worms.


"Should I have used R/O water ? that tank usually has tap water with a moderate hardness and neutral pH

Should I have left the heater off or on ?

Should I have waited until another rain storm ?

Should I have turned on the bubble wall to help oxygenate the tank ?

Should I have waited for lights off or another time in the day ?"

In the wild these fish spawn at the start of the rainy season. Rain water is softer and cooler then the water in the rivers and streams after the dry season. Different species have different difficulty levels in terms of triggering a spawn.

Of the two I would say the sterbai are the more difficult to trigger. My first Corydorus spawn C aneaus occured in a bare bottom tank and the only trigger was a water change with cooler, tap water. In my area that means a hard water with over 18 degrees of hardness. Ph out of our taps is ~7.8 to 8.2 when we test it.
"...

What is that ? (Sorry, I don't know how to quote the modified image you inserted here)
P4200247.JPG (69.07 KiB) "

That is an artifact from an earlier attempt to segregate the eggs from the adults in one of my breeding groups. The white is a pvc lift tube, the black is a piece of poret filter foam cut to size to form a stoper in a one gallon pickel jar. Eggs are placed in the jar and the Jar is submerged in the tank. The lift tube removes water from the jar, the weight of the water above forces water through the foam refilling the bottle with freshly filtered water the foam has a second tube that runs from above the water level to within the jar to be used as a feeding tube. Once the eggs hatch and the fry start seeking the surface I drop a second air line down the feeding tube to provide a bubble of air for them below the filter stopper. In that group it turned out the adults were not bothering the eggs nor the fry, so I removed the jar and released the fry. I had an active air line running, so I left that piece in the tank. The sponge serves as a place for additional bio film to form.

[CarlDeller]

Thanks for the comments. It's greatly appreciated and you have a very vast knowledge.

When you use cooler water during water change to you let it drop a certain amount of time or a set amount of degrees before you turn the heater back up ?

When my paleatus spawned the tank temp was 25.4C and there was a single clump of eggs. I put a ice cube made from R/O (about 1 liter) and when it had thawed the temp showed 22.8C. At which point I reconnected the heater.

[Marine590622]

My corry tanks are mostly unheated. At 25.4 celsius you are running warmer then I keep mine, My tank tempature for C paleatus, were between 20 and 22 degrees celsius. The exception would be my Coridorus sterbai which I kept at 28 degrees. For the tanks at room temp I left the room temp warm them back up. For the Sterbai, I left the heater on but did a water change with water about 2 to 3 degrees cooler celsius to trigger the spawn. This is one of the reasons I originally said part of your problem was keeping the two different species in the same tank.

[CarlDeller]

My corry tanks are mostly unheated. At 25.4 celsius you are running warmer then I keep mine, My tank tempature for C paleatus, were between 20 and 22 degrees celsius. The exception would be my Coridorus sterbai which I kept at 28 degrees. For the tanks at room temp I left the room temp warm them back up. For the Sterbai, I left the heater on but did a water change with water about 2 to 3 degrees cooler celsius to trigger the spawn. This is one of the reasons I originally said part of your problem was keeping the two different species in the same tank.

Ok that's very helpful. I only kept them together because I had read somewhere that the hormones the paleatus would exude when spawning would contribute to the sterbai getting in the mood. I think my sterbai might be too small to spawn yet so I'll keep them in my community tank which is kept at 26.6-27.2 .

How long do you let the tank cool for before you start reheating it ?

[Marine590622]

With both heated and unheated tanks they start warming back up immediately. With the unheated tanks, room temp slowly raises the temp back up. With the heated tanks, I leave the heater on when I do cool water changes.

[CarlDeller]

With both heated and unheated tanks they start warming back up immediately. With the unheated tanks, room temp slowly raises the temp back up. With the heated tanks, I leave the heater on when I do cool water changes.

Thanks for all your help. I'll make changes to my setup and keep posting updates.

UPDATE: I had 51 eggs yesterday morning and only 44 when i got back in the late evening. Maybe i spoke too soon about the

otocinclus

not eating eggs. But then again maybe they had fungus and ether the otos ate them or the RCS did. If i catch them in the act i'll be sure to post it here

[Marine590622]

....
UPDATE: I had 51 eggs yesterday morning and only 44 when i got back in the late evening. Maybe i spoke too soon about the

otocinclus

not eating eggs. But then again maybe they had fungus and ether the otos ate them or the RCS did. If i catch them in the act i'll be sure to post it here

Umm, I am guessing seeing as how you posted about the hatch on 5/1/2014 and about the missing eggs on 5/4/2014, you are starting to see them hatch.

[CarlDeller]

....
UPDATE: I had 51 eggs yesterday morning and only 44 when i got back in the late evening. Maybe i spoke too soon about the

otocinclus

not eating eggs. But then again maybe they had fungus and ether the otos ate them or the RCS did. If i catch them in the act i'll be sure to post it here

Umm, I am guessing seeing as how you posted about the hatch on 5/1/2014 and about the missing eggs on 5/4/2014, you are starting to see them hatch.

REALLY !!!! they are already hatching !!!!

I did a 50% water change that evening and i really hope i didn't lose any fish I'll take a closer look this evening after work.

Yeah I'm so excited !!!!

wish me luck


P.S. when the babies hatch do the eggs just disappear or do they eat the empty shells ?

Thanks again

[Marine590622]

The remnants of the egg are part of the yolk sack I believe. I am not sure though, maybe someone else on here can speak to that.

[Marine590622]

Carl,are you seeing any fry?