How best to feed a cory

[Da Squid]

I have a 55 gallon planted tank with 3 adult black mollies, their occasional fry, and ten neons. I just added 8 cory cats and two SAE's yesterday.
I've been feeding the fish lightly every day or sometimes every other day with Omega flake food and sometimes freeze dried blood worms, though they don't seem to care for the blood worms. I try to keep the fish hungry so they'll munch on my hair algae and also keep the fry population in check.

I bought some sinking wafers for the corries, but I'm not sure how many to feed them for a school of 8. Also, the mollies are being real bullies and going after the wafers. they chase the corries away and go after anything that gets near it. I've never seen the mollies get this aggresive before! I feed the mollies first before adding wafers but they still move over the bottom dweller food. Any advice? How many small wafers should I drop and how often? They are a little smaller than the size of a dime.

Thanks in advance.

 

[neilanh]

What kind of wafers?

I break up wafers into small pieces and just leave them on the bottom for my cories and bottom dwellers, seems to work just fine for them

 

[Da Squid]

hakari is the brand. Perhaps i'll start feeding the fish once a day to keep them less hungry.

 

[Etunes]

I feed mine once a day. They eat the flakes that get too the bottom and every other day i put in crushed up catfish pellets.

 

[FishEggs]

i break mine up and put them in different areas of the tank and usually the bigger fish will guard one but they cant keep the cories away from the others at the same time.

 

[eah]

I also break up the wafers and spread them out. I usually give one wafer for all of my bottom dwellers (about 6 cories and a dwarf pleco) I sometimes have my barbs or gouramis go after shrimp pellets, but not usually the wafers! On some days when I'm not feeding wafers or pellets, I'll feed a few extra flakes so that some extras fall to the bottom.

Feeding once a day might be a good strategy. What kind of cories did you get?

 

[Da Squid]

I wish I knew! I had a long list of all the different kinds I wanted. Maybe some elegant, or emerald etc. But little did I know how expensive they were! The store mostly had ones I've never heard of with long foreign sounding names. Only ones I recognized were pygmies (which I didn't care for) and Pandas. The panda's were 8 bucks each though which was way outta my price range. They also had a tank that was mysteriously labeled "tank bred corries". They are small active and sort of pale colored with a dark spot near their middle. Very active and healthy looking so far so I'm pleased.

One crushed wafer for 6 eh? I added about 3 wafers for my 8. Oops! Well, now I know thanks. I'll just do a WC tommorow and get on a once a day feeding schedual. Thanks all!
One last question, anyone know if SAE's eat wafer tabs? They have tons of thread algae to munch on in my tank but I'd like to have a backup food source for them.

 

[mgamer20o0]

i feed the flakes and pellets at the same time. mine tend to be to busy going after the flakes to bother the pellets. you can try feeding at night a little also.

 

[FishEggs]

my SAE eats algae wafers and flakes.

 

[Da Squid]

danka

 

[meegosh]

Try some shrimp pellets, my cories used to go nuts over them. Ironically enough, the shrimp liked them too. I also feed mine algae wafers, usually break it in half, half goes to the clown loach and half to the cory and kuhlis.

 

[Da Squid]

Thanks, I'll give that a try. I have a 2 gallon tank I'd like to put some shrimp and moss into so shrimp pellets will be on the shopping list anyhow.

Quick update, I've been feeding the fish every day now which seems to be working well. Keeping an eye on the nitrates and if anything they seem to be going down slightly (probably from the rampant hair/thread algae growing all over the tank). The one male mollie still bullies all the other fish, but 3 wafers broken in half makes 6 different places to feed. Its funny, the mollie will get a half wafer all to himself, so the 8 corries will all gather around a different one. Then the male mollie will see a crowd forming far away and charge into that one instead! the corries scatter and congregate at another. No one seems to be getting hurt from this and its really funny to watch. I guess he's just a jerk.
I suppose I'd want to feed even more flake food to try and stop this behavior, but the neons are already getting some big bellies as it is and the last thing I want to do is start bloating all my fish with too much food. Plus as I said, the feeding ritual is entertaining to watch.