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hi,

i have a ten gallon with 6 glowlights in it its been cycled and up for more than a mounth now and i was wondering what type of corys would be good with 6 glowlights and how many,

thanks

33 gallon 7 neon tetras-5 platys-3 bleeding heart tetras-2 corys-1 rainbow shark-2 L83 gibby plecos

That's going to be a tight squeeze.

Your problem here is that Corydoras are happiest in social groups. To make matters worse from your standpoint, the smallest Corydoras have the greatest need to be in a group of their own kind - big ones such as Bronze and Peppered Corys are better described as 'moderately gregarious', while the likes of Pandas and habrosus are avowedly social, and NEED to be in a good sized group (I wouldn't recommend a group size less than 8 for either of those species).

Two possible choices that are open include Corydoras pygmaeus and Corydoras hastatus - species having the advantage of tiny size. However, these don't behave like other Corys - they're actually midwater swimmers, though they do feed off the bottom. If you run with one of those two species, again, you are looking at a tight squeeze because you would probably need 8 of them to be happy, and in a 10 gallon, you'd be looking at beefing up your filtration and performing frequent gravel vacs.

Let's get one thing straight here - the small size of your aquarium is what is hampering you here. In a larger setup, you would have MUCH more freedom of choice, not least because Glowlights share their native waters with over a dozen corydoras species in the wild and would get on famously with just about any Corydoras you chose. But the fishes will have a minimum space requirement that might be too great for your 10 gallon to provide.

If you're prepared for the aquarium to be fairly high maintenance, then you could run with the pygmaeus or hastatus shoal, but I emphasise that the aquarium would be a fairly 'hands on' system if you did simply in order to keep the water clean enough for the fishes to be happy. Experienced keepers who devote lots of time to their aquaria can get away with such things of course, but if this is your first aquarium, I would think long and hard before you tinkered with the stocking in this fashion.

If on the other hand you have a fair amount of prior fishkeeping experience under your belt, and you feel confident enough to run a fairly high maintenance setup, then this is the route I'd advise. Not least because the 'micro Corys' as some people call them, are VASTLY underrated and really cute little fishes.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

juliis would be ok

Yup. I'm that crazy Twilight/animal/music girl

All my initial breeding tanks were ten gallons. A trio or quartet of medium sized fish--say, less than aeneus, should be fine for life.