problems conditioning green cory

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Jett

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Apr 11, 2013
Messages
21
Location
Ohio
Okay, this is my second time trying to do this, I'm not sure if it worked last time or not. :)

So my female and male corys are separate in two different tanks. I have 5 males and 1 female. The female won't spawn when I put her and some males together and she's not that gravid from the looks. I tested my water and it's fine. I do 1/5 water changes every other day. I've fed them frozen bloodworms, frozen brine shrimp, shrimp pellets, tropical flakes, and veggie flakes daily for nearly 2 weeks now.

Is she lonely? What's the problem? Any advice?
 
Okay, this is my second time trying to do this, I'm not sure if it worked last time or not. :)

So my female and male corys are separate in two different tanks. I have 5 males and 1 female. The female won't spawn when I put her and some males together and she's not that gravid from the looks. I tested my water and it's fine. I do 1/5 water changes every other day. I've fed them frozen bloodworms, frozen brine shrimp, shrimp pellets, tropical flakes, and veggie flakes daily for nearly 2 weeks now.

Is she lonely? What's the problem? Any advice?

Assuming that they are old enough to breed, try feeding her more higher protien foods like tubifex worms (live if you can, freezed dried as second choice) or Daphnia along with her regular diet to get her conditioned better.
Breeding cories usually need to have a drop in temp to spur them on. Once the female is more gravid (and you can see it) place her and 2-3 males in the spawning tank then daily water changes with new water about 2-3 degrees colder than the tank. Normal temp should be 78-80 degrees.
Sometimes, the female will stay away from the males while they search for a good spawning site so you have to give them time.
Make sure you have some plants (live or artificial) in the tank for them to spawn on. Breeding might take as long a 2 weeks from introduction so you have to be patient. If no spawn after 2 weeks, look at the conditions of the water and tank size. I wouldn't spawn in anything less than a 24" long tank.

Hope this helps (y)
 
Ok. I have 2 10 gallons though and I'm not going to be able to get anything bigger than that. :/ Would that work without causing problems?

Also, if I keep three males with my female, how am I to know when they'll spawn? Wouldn't they do it unplanned and eat them all?
 
Ok. I have 2 10 gallons though and I'm not going to be able to get anything bigger than that. :/ Would that work without causing problems?

Also, if I keep three males with my female, how am I to know when they'll spawn? Wouldn't they do it unplanned and eat them all?

With Cories, most of the time, they don't eat their own eggs so you will see them when they have spawned. They should be everywhere around the plants. :D At that point, you can remove the parents as they will no longer be necessary.

As for tank size, the suggestion for a larger tank is due to the usual size of a spawn. It will be more difficult to raise up a full size spawn in a 10 gal so if they do spawn, you should be prepared to get a larger tank to grow out the fry or you'll need to split the fry into more tanks.

Keep us posted (y)
 
I usually put the new eggs in a breeder net in full water flow and with an air pump below. Wouldn't a lot of eggs fungus if I left them all over the tank? Also, raising fry might be hard in that big of an area, right? Have you had much luck that way?
 
I usually put the new eggs in a breeder net in full water flow and with an air pump below. Wouldn't a lot of eggs fungus if I left them all over the tank? Also, raising fry might be hard in that big of an area, right? Have you had much luck that way?

The eggs don't fungus because they are spread out. They fungus over because the conditions in the tank were not correct for the eggs to live so they die off then fungus. With adequate water movement within the tank, the eggs should survive as well as in your breeder net. The key is to put an airstone with some good bubble action near where the eggs are so that the water keeps moving. Just as you do in your net breeder.

As for me, I used to breed multiple cories in larger vats after conditioning the fish in smaller tanks. Once the spawn happened, I did exactly what I just told you with the exception of using a sponge filter instead of an airstone. It worked just fine ;) I also used live plants in the vats so that the fry had a ready source of infusoria to feed on until they were large enough to eat Newly Hatched Brine Shrimp where I then used a turkey baster to "shoot" the shrimp into the areas where the fry congregated.

That all being said, if you were having success using the breeder net method, why change? ;)
 
Guess what happened? :) Today woke up, peeked in my tank, and saw about 4 eggs on the glass. I can't believe I caught them only a few minutes into the spawning!! I started putting eggs in the net, so I hope this works. I'm thinking about 30-50 eggs, she never got that big.

Why do the males wiggle against the glass at good egg laying spots? It's not with the mouth like the female, so I have to wonder if they put some chemical on. ??

I'll keep you posted!
 
Guess what happened? :) Today woke up, peeked in my tank, and saw about 4 eggs on the glass. I can't believe I caught them only a few minutes into the spawning!! I started putting eggs in the net, so I hope this works. I'm thinking about 30-50 eggs, she never got that big.

Why do the males wiggle against the glass at good egg laying spots? It's not with the mouth like the female, so I have to wonder if they put some chemical on. ??

I'll keep you posted!

Congrats. Hope it all works out for ya (y)

As for what the male is doing, if there are eggs there, he's fertilizing them, if there are no eggs there, he's propably cleaning the area in preperation as a spawn site.

Keep us posted (y)
 
It looks like 150-175 eggs! :) I put an air pump underneath and two filters in the tank. I alse added a few drops of tea tree and some hydrogen peroxide. Do I need to do water changes or anything? I have the heat now set for 84 F. Last time the eggs hatched in under two days I think.
 
It looks like 150-175 eggs! :) I put an air pump underneath and two filters in the tank. I alse added a few drops of tea tree and some hydrogen peroxide. Do I need to do water changes or anything? I have the heat now set for 84 F. Last time the eggs hatched in under two days I think.

Truthfully, I've never used any of the things you are describing. For fungus control, we used Methylene blue only with great success. Filters? Good only if sponge filters.
Water changes? Not until after the eggs hatch and you start feeding the fry.

Hatching time? At 84, < 2 days sounds about right. (I'd cool the temp down to about 80-82 tho so that the fry develope a bit more slowly before hatching)(y)

The rest is just a waiting game :D
 
I use cherry shrimp in my Cory nursery tank. They can't eat the eggs but refuse to leave them alone. They keep the eggs clean for me.
 
Truthfully, It's been many years since I bred these fish so I can't really give you an accurate percentage HOWEVER, there is a lot more to take into consideration when comparing methods. First of which is the fish themselves. Have they proven that they can produce good viable fry consistantly? Until they do, you can't rally compare outcomes accuratly. M. Blue is ( or was) the standard for fungus protection for eggs. Many breeders still use it religously. I used it on certain fish more than others and sometimes, not at all. If you have fish with high percentage hatchings, the amount of dead eggs to even get fungused over goes down tremendously and the need to medicate (IMO) goes down with it.
With using the shrimp, again, if the fish doesn't make viable eggs, the shrimp don't make the eggs hatch by keeping them from fungusing.
Just something to think about ;)
 
So some fish have better genitics? Is that why? or do just some random fish have better hatching rates than others?
 
What I've found with my cories is it all depends on the parents. If they rush through the process, not all the eggs are viable. I have one that I consistently get 40 or so eggs from and I get maybe a 70% hatch rate. I have another female that I swear just likes to scatter eggs all over and from her 60+ eggs only about 50% survive. If you have an extra tank, the best way is to toss mom and dad into the tank feed them cool water change and they'll lay eggs for you. Then just put them back into their original tank. My friend uses that method and gets 80+ fry every time. I don't have a basement full of tanks like he does so that not an option for me.
 
Should I look into using MB? Also, my fish could possibly be siblings, but the place I got them from has different cory breeders they buy fish from, so I have no clue. If they are siblings, would their eggs be highly infertile or have lower hatching rates? Are corys easily inbred?

My female laid eggs in only one spot, and it took them 5-6 hours to lay around 150 eggs. Is that considered " good"?
 
Should I look into using MB? Also, my fish could possibly be siblings, but the place I got them from has different cory breeders they buy fish from, so I have no clue. If they are siblings, would their eggs be highly infertile or have lower hatching rates? Are corys easily inbred?

My female laid eggs in only one spot, and it took them 5-6 hours to lay around 150 eggs. Is that considered " good"?

In-breeding is generations of brothers and sisters being bred to each other. Yes, there could be higher infertility rates but there could also be higher rates of disfigured fish at normal fertility. When we were dealing with wild fish, Ma Nature ;) designed things to have the strongest breeders breed (usually not to a sibling) to carry forth the specie while the weaker fish just lived their lives without the chance to breed. Now that we are talking about tank bred and raised fish, you no longer know from the start whether these are genetically strong fish or not and the ramdom pairing could produce infertile eggs.

Next case, younger, first time breeders (actually first few times breeding) may not produce good hatching percentage even if they were the strongest genetically designed fish out there. So in order to KNOW what the best method is, you need to compare the different methods once the fish produce a strong hatch percentage under whatever method you are using at the time. For example: Assuming that all the other parameters are exactly the same, if your fish repeatedly produce a 60% hatch using meth. blue but then produce 75% hatch with using shrimp as the "protector", it would be safe to say that the shrimp make a better % hatching rate. But if you try one time with M.B. and get 50% then try a second time with Shrimp and get 75%, there is no conclusive data to say that the shrimp were the reason as the parents themselves could have matured which gave them the better hatching rate. You follow? :confused: The only way to know for sure which is better is to have one repeated result that changes when you do something different.
If you follow some of the threads on here (AA) about breeding Angelfish, this process can't be more evident. Angels take about 4-6 spawns before they get the act "right". For this reason alone, no definite assumptions can be made about the viability of a pair until after those 4-6 spawns. For me, I just wanted to have 1 egg hatch in any of those first few spawns just to verify that fish were fertile. (It only takes one hatch to prove that :brows:) It wasn't until after that period that I would assess whether to keep that pair together or to switch partners. In your case, since you have multiple males, you must make sure that you use the same male/ males to base your success or failures with.

As for the egg count, that's good. (y) The time it takes for the whole spawning process is irrelevent. Fish sometimes take breaks while spawning so time is meaningless to them.

Now, let's see some hatchlings from all this :D (y)
 
Guess what? i have 80ish fry! They will probably die off some in the next couple days though, knowing cory fry. what do I feed them besides egg yolk and crushed flake?
 
Guess what? i have 80ish fry! They will probably die off some in the next couple days though, knowing cory fry. what do I feed them besides egg yolk and crushed flake?

Instead of crushed flake (which is an adult food) I'd try the Hikari First bites or microworms once they are free swimming followed by frozen or live, newly hatched baby brine shrimp. Once you see them growing, you can start adding some powdered flake foods or growth foods that are designed for yournger fish to help them grow. Just make sure you keep their water clean.

Hope this helps (y)
 
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