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I'm looking for a good bottom feeder to go in my 90 gallon tank that Houses around 10 Cyps and around 10 adult Multies and a bunch of juvies. Could I add a group of Corys to keep the bottom cleaner? If so what kind and how many? I was looking at the emerald greens. Would a group of 5 be ok? My lfs has lots of corys but the emerald greens are the largest (close to 3 inches). Thanks!

im no expert but i do know cories liek to eat eggs and i know multis arnt fans of egg eaters so to start this sounds like a bad idea. Next issue is water chemistry, cories perfer softer and lower ph type water as multis like hard as a rock how can anything live in that water.

this leads me to believe that this scenerio isnt going to work but by no means is my 2 cents worth any more then just that....2 cents heheh.

Most cichlids are just too plain territorial for corydoras. Don't do it.

Ok, sounds like a no go. Thanks for the input.

In addition, adding Corydoras to a Rift Lake setup will be a bad idea even if compatibility with the other fishes isn't an issue - the two groups of fishes (Corys and Rift Lake Cichlids) hail from water bodies with a vast difference in chemistry. Even hardy ones such as Bronze or Peppered Corys that have been domesticated for generations might be less than happy in Rift Lake water, and certain othe species (Pandas in particular) will probably expire if you make the mistake with those.

There are, of course, Rift Lake native catfishes you could select, but again, you would have a behaviour compatibility problem to overcome, as I suspect any Rift Lake Synodontis you find will not only be happy to add caviar to the diet, but will be big enough to cause other problems with your Cichlids. They could compete for cave space apart from anything else, and even though the Synos will (if they are true Rift Lake Synos) ostensibly live alongside the Cichlids in the wild, don't forget that in this case, 'living alongside' means sharing a lake that's big enough to sail ocean going steamships on, so there's plenty of space for them to find niches in the wild where they don't necessarily interact!


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Not to mention I had an airheaded moment where I put a peaceful juvie ABN in with a tank of multis and they beat the pulp out of the poor thing. I removed him the next day and has recovered well but multis are just way to territorial and protective of their babies to have any other bottom dwellers IMO... However, some could argue that since you have a big tank it may not be as big an issue but I personally wouldn't risk it.