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Friday, I went to my LFS and purchased a pair of San Juan Cories. These will be the first of a school that I will build. Having never owned cories I am having a hard time feeding them. The local fish store recommended some Omega Sinking Shrimp Pellets. How ever the cories ignore them leaving a nice snack for the snails. I've also tried just sinking some flake food which was also ignored. They did go for a few blood worms, but it just doesn't look like they eat much. My Neons eat like pigs compared to these guys.

Does anyone have any advice on getting these cories to eat?
How about what types of food?
How often they should be feed?

Thanks
-Rick


Rick
See all my pictures at Google Web Albums

Give them time. Once they start feeling hungry, they'll start looking for food. Plus, if they're wild caught ones, chances are they'll still do most of their feeding in the dark. So first of all, try feeding them at 'lights out', and see if that makes a difference. Once they start to realise that you're the person who puts food in there, they'll become bolder during the daytime, and start visibly feeding with more gusto.

As for food, well, basically, variety is the spice of life. Corys should be quite happy eating flakes, but the trick here is to ensure that the diet isn't a monotonous one. Feed a variety of flakes (my Pandas get six different ones from the Tetra stable) and also feed things such as Hikari wafers and freeze dried Tubifex. Live foods are excellent for your Corys if you can get them, and will condition them beautifully for spawning. My Pandas get Daphnia, Bloodworm and Brine Shrimp, which puts nice little smiles on their faces!

Plus, if you only have two Corys at the moment, they'll be feeling a little shy because of this. Once the numbers increase, you should see a change in behaviour - they shoudl become increasingly more bold and outgoing as the shoal size grows. When you have 6, things should start getting into gear, and if you can arrange to have 10 or more, then they'll probably reward you with some amazing Cory comedy mayhem!


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Calilasseia, gave you an excellent roundup of how & what you feed the Corydoras. I give mine Bloodworms & they go crazy for them.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/corydoras/
Member of the Malta Aquarist Society - 1970.
http://www.maltaaquarist.com

As a matter of fact I've just bought another batch of live food for the inmates of the Panda Fun Palace today ... including a nice batch of Bloodworm. They're going in in the next few minutes after I've typed this ... I expect mayhem to ensue once the Pandas sniff out the "red spaghetti"


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Thanks guys for the input. They do seem to be settling down this week. They are much more active and are actively feeding when I put flake or worms in the tank. I haven't seen anything I would call Mayhem yet but they are eating and exploring the QT Tank. I imagine that once they move to the main tank and I add some friends they will really liven up.

I've seen them eat flake and worm and suspect that they are taking to the Hikari Bottom Feeder wafers and Shrimp pellets. Although, I feed these at lights out so it could be the snails. I'll need to watch and see if my snail population explodes.

Thanks
-Rick


Rick
See all my pictures at Google Web Albums

Live food went in on cue ... and ...

Panda nuttiness in abundance was the order of the day.

Believe me, if you EVER get the chance to feed your Corys with live Bloodworm, do so ... and you'll know what I mean when I say that a fish can smile!

Once the Pandas discover that I've dumped in live Bloodworm, you can almost hear them calling out in Chip 'N' Dale voices, "Daddy's brought the spaghetti! Yay!" Once the snouts are in the pig trough, so to speak, and the little tails are wagging away like puppies with fins, it usually doesn't take long before they start getting frisky and I'm transferring yet more Panda Cory eggs to the nursery

Once they've had a good feed on that, and they are contentedly burping away, I usually don't have to wait long for the patter of yet more tiny fins


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

I discovered something interesting this weekend. Since I have had some food available on the floor that the corys aren't eating the snail population in my QT has began to grow. This weekend I squished some of the snails just to cut their population down some and when the snails fell to the bottom the corys dove in. It was quite entertaining watching them trash the snail around to pull out the soft parts.

So my corys like their escargot. Good thing I have some snails in the big tank as well. I'll have to start squishing at water changes to give the guys a fun treat.


Rick
See all my pictures at Google Web Albums