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I have some Albino Bronze Corries,and they kept laying eggs in my 15. Recently we set up a 28, and we took some eggs into it to see what happened. If they lived, great, if not, it didn't matter too much. Now, i have 7 tiny baby catfish, and not much idea how to look after them properly.
So, they are in the 28 by themselves, and we've been putting in crushed bits of catfish pellets. They all seem ok so far, but they are only a few days old, and about 5mm long.
I would like to know:
1) How big/old do they have to be before i can add more fish?
2) Will they get on ok with 5 Black Neon Tetras, 3 Other Albinos (the parents), 2 male guppies and a BN ?
3) How old do they have to be before i can rehome them (if they all live i'm only allowed to keep about 3)
4) How do i feed them? Are the crushed pellets ok?
5) Will they all end up albino or bronze? They're see-through at the minute so it's hard to tell.

Any other advice would be really useful. Thanks.

BNF

For questions 1-3, the answers all depend on the other fishes. Once the fry are bigger than the mouths of others, you can generally give them some company. However, there are cases where fishes with larger mouths will leave them alone and where fishes with smaller mouths will still attack, so I would not trust the tetras or the guppies with the fry, yet.

The crushed pellets are okay, so long as they are not too big. Otherwise, there could be leftovers that decay (look out for them). To encourage growth, give them a variety of foods, such as crushed flakes or baby brine shrimp.

They will end up albino.

Hints and tips from someone who has raised three generations of Panda Corys ...

[1] Adult Corys tend not to eat their own fry. So once the babies hatch, they're relatively safe. It's other fishes you might have to be cautious with, but even then, the other fishes have to see the fry, and in the case of Panda Cory fry, those things are practically invisible against natural gravel.

[2] If you can get Java Moss for the fry to hide in, this will aid their survival in a tank containing other fishes. The fry will have the good sense to go to ground and hide in the Java Moss. They'll also hide amongst fine leaved plants such as Cabomba and the rootstocks of Amazon Swords where they'll be hard to find.

[3] Food - if you can't supply them with live foods to begin with, look out for something called Liquifry. This product is available in two varieties - one for egglayer fry and one for livebearer fry. Needless to say, you get the eglayer version. If you have obtained some Java Moss for the fry to hide in, adding the Liquifry so that the drops fall into the Java Moss will make sure that the fry are fed. You can grind up regular fish foods to a fine powder for the same purpose, but unless you have some experience with this, metering the amount of food needed for the fry can be a bit tricky, and it's all too easy to overfeed.

[4] If the fry have hiding places, they'll use them until they're about 4-5 weeks old. You can expect them to start making forays into the wider world at that age, when they're starting to differentiate the finfold and develop proper unpaired fins. They should be around 6 to 8 mm long at that stage, and too big for most regular small community fishes to eat them.

[5] Watch their development carefully. Albino Corys (which are usually an albino form of the Bronze Cory) should show no major changes in colouration during their development. This is different from the case with non-albino Bronze Corys, which can be expected to show colour changes. Some Corydoras fry show considerable differences between fry and adult colours - my Pandas are covered in 'pepper dots' until they're around 10 to 12 weeks old, when they 'pepper dots' disappear. The most extreme colour change occurs in Corydoras rabauti - take a look at the difference between fry and adult fishes if you can, and be amazed at the difference!

[6] With your Cory fry, you won't need to be as fastidious about the cleanliness of their surroundings as I needed to be with Pandas, but it helps. They'll grow faster if they have regular water changes. You can hold off gravel vacs for a couple of weeks until they grow big enough to see, so you're not hoovering the poor fry out of the tank along with the wastes! However, during this period, change 10% of the water every other day for optimum results.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

As far as breeding-time sexual dimorphism goes, you just can't beat C. pantanalensis .

Also, Cass has written up a good summation of all things corydoras-fry related, but I'd just like to add that corydoras parents and fry are on a shaky relationship while the fry are still sac-bound. I have seen almost every species of corydoras I've bred succumb to the temptations of fry-feasting (the fry are always kept in the same tank as their parents, as they are usually just dithers for my loricariids), up until the point where the yolk sacs are absorbed.

I'll make a note of that C_o_L - free swimming fry are OK, but before the free swimming stage, bets could be off.

Oh, I looked up Corydoras pantanalensis on Planet Catfish ... apparently they only have photos of non-breeding individuals. Scotcat, on the other hand, has photos of a female and a breeding male ... and the difference is stunning to behold. For those who have not seen this fish, here are some links:

Female Corydoras pantanalensis

Male Corydoras pantanalensis in breeding dress

I think everyone will agree that's a radical difference!

Sadly, I can't find a photo of the juvenile Corydoras rabauti to compare with the adult via a Google image search, but if anyone can obtain a copy of the Derek Lambourne book on Corydoras Catfishes, there's a photo in there - check it out and see just how much of a colour change this fish undergoes from juvenile to adult ...


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Yeah, I don't get it either--it seems to happen among most species of catfish that I've worked with; plecos seem to eat sacced fry that the male has accidentally kicked out of the cave, as do snails, but when the yolk's gone, nothing'll touch them---maybe the potential predators recognize the nutritional value of the yolk? I dunno; it's quite strange, really.

I cannot be sure if this provides an explanation, but this is something worth looking into - once the fry have absorbed the yolk sac and are free-swimming, the bony scutes are well-developed. The Lambourne book has drawings of the fry (sadly I don't own a copy, the one I referenced was a library copy) and those drawings clearly illustrate the presence of scutes in free-swimming fry. I presume that the pectoral and dorsal spines are also functional in the free-swimming fish from an early age, which might account for the reluctance of predators to devour them.

If the free-swimming fry are able to deploy defences at a very early age, then this is going to confer a survival advantage upon them in a tough world full of would-be predators - it would make sense. Thanks to the discovery of Corydoras revelatus in Argentina, we know that the Genus Corydoras has been in existence, in a form that has changed very little, for around 50 million years - that fossil Cory is an exceptionally well preserved and complete specimen, and displays all of the anatomical attributes that we would expect to see in a modern Cory. Given that Corydoras Catfishes have been with us for 50 million years, they've had plenty of time to hone their fry development.

However, until someone publishes some accessible photographs (or even better, video footage) of Corydoras development at high magnification, allowing us to see these features developing, some of the above must remain speculative, even though it makes basic sense in tandem with your own observations. At times like this I wish I had a nice histology lab and a Hasselblad H3D-39 to do the filming ...


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Thanks. Turns out i have 8 babies.
We aren't adding any other fish for a while anyway, not 'till after xmas. I'll see if i can get some of the liquifry soon, going to my LFS soon. I'm hoping by then they'll be big enough for me to add the tetras, and the tetras wont eat them (they ate ALL of the fry that hatched in the tank before we had the new tank.)
Thanks.

You may be surprised to find a couple still around in the original tank, even if you think the other fish ate them. When my corries first started breeding, I had no idea that I had fry till I saw the tiniest bit of motion from "nothingness" in the tank. After starring/glaring at the tank for some time I realized it was fry. As for the pandas, I noticed the fry when they were probably close to a month old...the 29 gallon was going totally crazy (turns out to be the food I was feeding them changing the water to green) but suddenly sitting there watching them like I tend to do after a crazy, stressful day, talking on the phone, I saw them and well, the other person is now deaf...sorry Susan I couldn't help from squealing. Give them plenty of places to hide, drop in some food, and they will be fine and good luck

"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom." Thomas Carlyle