catfish breeding

[atlantis_child]

I’ve been wanting to breed catfish for a while. Was debating between bronze or peppered (paleatus) corys. Decided to go with peppered, as I have a gorgeous female already, and the youngish ones at the store are much nicer.

Bought one I’m 90% sure is male. Researching, but wantrd to ask hrer for advice.

oh… I got a surprise gift of a slight used aquarium through my dad. Gussing about a 25, but hard to tell.

Weird considering he don’t like certain aspects of my hobby. Like when I spill lotsa water on thw carpet. Thinks 3 aquariums are too much.

Huh…?

No complaint at all though

This one has to go in basement, but thats fine, it’s well enough down thrtr, and has a proper hood ovrt tsnk and all.

Came with food and some packs of carbon. Last thing I need round here is food. Have years of supply.. :roll:

So anyway, advice please?

– Atlantis

[altaaffe]

I’ve only had Plecs breed from all the cats I have, however have seen Cory’s breed. They will tend to lay their eggs on a flat surface (have seen them on broad leaf plants, slate & even the glass. So I’d give them the option, perhaps a large leaf sword plant, some stone and a bit of wood for cover.

As for the number of tanks, 3 is never enough !! :wink:

[katkin]

My albino cories breed every month or two. I have two females and two males. Feed live foods whenever you can to get them into condition. The temp is at 24C and spawning always seems to take place within a day of a large water change. If they spawn in the community tank, I try to remove as many eggs as possible to a seperate tank. If I’m on the ball and notice when the female is ready to spawn, I’ll move her and whichever male is chasing her to a spawning tank.
The female will clean an area of either tank glass, filter or sometimes the heater then deposit the eggs on the cleaned area. They eggs are very sticky.
Once spawnnig has finished, I’ll remove the adults and return them to the community tank.
Keep an eye on the eggs and remove any that get fungus growing on them. They will hatch in about 4 days. I feed microworms and infusoria for the first week then slowly introduce crushed flake and newly hatched baby brine shrimp.
Hope that’s of some help.

[atlantis_child]

@altaaffe wrote:

They will tend to lay their eggs on a flat surface (have seen them on broad leaf plants, slate & even the glass. So I’d give them the option, perhaps a large leaf sword plant, some stone and a bit of wood for cover.

Seems like there are two thoughts on this cory breeding subject I’ve come across so far.

The ‘natural’ setting, and the ‘artificial’ with bare setting and spawn mops.

I’m leaning towards inbetween. I’ll put some of my plants and rock, and some mops, but not tons of stuff.

I really need to get my hands on some live worm cultures. Corys really go for them worms.

I fed my gave my cats the rest of a freeze-dried tubifix cube after the gouramis had softened it enough to sink it. I;ve never seen such happy cats. Most were just getting pieces that came off, but then Chewy (my big peppered girl found the jackpot.

Her little tail was wagging, even though she was sitting on the bottom. Way too cute!

I’ve pretty much been only adding cats to my 22 gallon after I gave my bratty many male platys to a guy at work with a tank in the office there.
Full of zebra and giant danios swarming at the top. Real dull.

So now, I got:
2 peppered
1 gold green
1 bronze
1 Melnenitus
1 Julii
1 panda
1 elegens

I know it’s a variety, but often they were the last one there, and we don’t get them in often. Especially the Melnenitus, Julii, panda and elegens.

Not all are cheap too, even with discount.

They don’t seem to mind though. They all hang out together, and I’m pretty sure the elegans and Melnenitus think they’re the same species…

– Atlantis

[Garrard29]

One of the most popular fish that new and experienced aquarists breed is corydoras catfish. People are attached to them because of their fun character, friendly personality, peacefulness, small size, and their ability to clean up food off the substrate. After falling in love with these little characters, for many the next step is attempting to breed them.
But if you want to purposely get your corydoras catfish to breed, then it is highly advisable to set up a corydoras species tank, as other fish in the tank might not be tolerant of the conditions that you could make to help the corydoras want to breed.

The breeding tank doesn’t have to be very big, but make sure it has a large footprint (large substrate area) as opposed to being quite a tall tank, you don’t want to be investing money in a large tank, when it has the same footprint as a tank with less volume that could have been bought for less money. This is because quite simply, as you will notice, corydoras catfish tend to swim around the bottom of the tank, across and along, and don’t use the upper areas very much. You also want to have the water pretty oxygenated in the fry tank, and a large footprint gives more surface area to absorb it.

It has been known for corydoras catfish to breed in a tank as small as 5g, however they would need to only be in there for a short period of time whilst breeding occurs. A tank so small would require a lot of water changes and maintenance to keep the nitrAtes down. As a breeding tank, I would recommend a tank around 10g, obviously with proper filtration and a heater. This would require less water changes and maintenance, and give the corydoras catfish more swimming space, thus most probably making happier corys.

Decoration is down to personal choice, however things such as sand/small rounded gravel substrates and hiding places would be recommended to make that little effort to make the corys happy, which is very important. I would not, however, create too many nooks and crannies as you don’t want finding the eggs to be too difficult. A quite important addition you might want to add is a couple of broad leaved plants, since some species of corydoras like to lay their eggs on plants.

Just like keeping them normally, you will need to keep your breeding corydoras catfish in groups to encourage them to breed. It has been known for them to breed in groups of 3, but more is obviously better, 6 is a very good number.

Next up is the fry tank. This will have to be bigger than the breeding tank, as you could be looking at over 100 fry, and all of these will have to be raised by you to a sellable size. A good choice is to have more than one fry setup, upgrading as they get bigger. As a general guide, I would say around 10g or less as a hatchery and to raise the fry in the very early stages, 15-20g as they are a bit bigger, and 30g for when they are coming up to sellable size, the sellable size depending on what lfs you want to sell them to. The reason I recommend more than one is that 100+ tiny tiny fry in a 30g tank, the odds of them getting the small amount of food that you will be adding would be slim.

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