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Hi I've got a few julli cories in my tank they have been there 6wks and I was wondering about feeding. At the moment i've never feed anything special I figured they can pick up the flake scraps, is this enough? they also seem to like to run up some of my plants and (i think) eat little bit of alge off them.

I also have a bristle nose that i put in after the tank cycled, he just hanged out on my driftwood for about two weeks and the alge grew I removed most of it except the back wall and filter pipes. The BN has since decided that he likes it in my tank and there is now no alge anywhere (that i can see) so my question is does he have enough food?

I've seen all these sinking foods etc but I'm wondering if they really need them. It seems to me when I visit the LFS there are a lot of products that arn't really needed provided you do a little tank maintenence.

but as a reborn newbe I'd like some advice

This is my first tropical tank after keeping goldfish as a kid (20 yers ago) so I'm just lesrning about every thing.
the tank is fully cycled and has several plants, canister filter, several small tetras, 2 dawf gorami, 2 blue rams and is 40 gallon. Water tests perfect nil amonia, nitrite and currently nitrate (have the plants leeched it all up?)

Cories will eat some leftover food on the bottom, but I'd still feed them something. I feed mine sinking shrimp pellets. I have yoyo loaches and cories in my 55g and I put in about 4-5 pellets a night. For your few cories, I'd only put in a couple, as they expand.

For the bristlenose, I'd still supplement him another type of food also. Mine loves algae wafers. I think Hikari is the best brand, but I've recently got mine to eat the Wardly brand (its cheaper!). I put in 1 wafer every night and its gone in the morning.

If you see alot of leftover food (wafer or pellets) then you can only do one pellet a night or a couple every other night and maybe half a wafer. I doubt they'll be any left though. My bolivian ram also likes the algae wafer.

*Kristin*

My BNs eat any thing that floats to the bottom. I break up 4 algae chips every day so that the hungry CLs do not carry then off and eat them all.
They also love many other fruits and vegies as a treat.

Not having Cories I can not help you there Call in the UK would be one of the best to assist you there.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

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Keith

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Right, Cory feeding.

First of all, if you make the mistake of treating them purely as 'scavenger fishes' eating the other fishes' leftovers, you won't get the best out of them. Corys appreciate prime fish foods just as much as any Discus does. Look at it this way, if you were faced with the choice of getting your next meal out of someone's dustbin, and having a slap up lobster thermidor banquet paid for by someone else, which would you choose?

If you treat your Corys as honoured guests in the aquarium, and ensure that they always have prime morsels of their own to snack upon, then they'll almost certainly reward you with the patter of tiny fins. If my Pandas are anything to go by, this is very definitely true!

So, at this point, you'll be thinking, "how do I purposely feed the Corys?" Simple. Just make sure prime food reaches the bottom before any other fishes in there snap it up. There are numerous methods you can adopt here. In the case of flakes or similar foods, try this trick: moisten some flakes beforeheand, then deliver them to the spot in the aquarium where your Corys hang out using a spare piece of undergravel filter uplift tube. Immediately after doing so, feed the top and middle feeders the conventional way so that they are occupied with feeding from their own table, so to speak, and thus don't steal the Corys' lunch.

Next up, of course, is a fast sinking food. LOTS to choose from here. Again, if your Corys share their home with some fast moving top and middle feeders, I'd feed the top and middle feeders with flakes and keep them occupied while you deliver the sinking foods (in whatever form) to the Corys. Again, press a piece of undergravel filter uplift tube into service to keep the other fishes away from the food as it's sinking, and allow you to deliver the food precisely to the spot where the Corys are hanging out. If your Corys have a particular 'home base' (such as the bogwood 'boot' in the case of my Pandas) then deliver the food there using the tubing. If you don't have a spare undergravel filter uplift tube to use, press something else into service in a similar manner - marine aquarists reading this are already hollering the words "TURKEY BASTER" at me! Just make sure that you press into service something that isn't contaminated - in other words, if you DO use a turkey baster, DON'T use the one that's been used previously on the Tnanksgiving turkey!

Now, as to foods, the key point to remember here is this. Variety is the spice of life. With Corys, this goes a LONG way toward priming them up to the point where the patter of tiny fins becomes a distinct possibliity. This of course applies to your other fishes too, so you should, if you're feeding them properly, already have several foods to hand. In my case, I have:

TetraMin flake
TetraRuby ColourPride flake
Tetra Pro
Tetra Pro Colour
Tetra Pro Vegetable
Tetra Prima Granules

These flake type foods are supplemented with freeze dried Tubifex, and when I can get them, Hikari wafers (which are bought for my Otocinclus, but my Pandas love them too!).

Add to this collection of prepared foods, the fact that I feed live food banquets on a regular basis, and this goes a long way toward explaining why my Pandas are the madcap comedy slapstick team that they are.

If you can feed live foods to your Corys, then you are well and truly in business as far as spawning is concerned. Corys will munch upon live Daphnia happily, and will also take live Brine Shrimp. But, if there is one thing that will put a smile on your Corys' faces, it's live Bloodworm. You want to see the reaction I get from my Pandas when I dump in live Bloodworm! "Ooh, Daddy's supplied the red spaghetti! YAY!" They can even tell when I'm about to feed live foods, because my footstep vibrations around the tank are different from those that accompany flake feeding. So, they're out of their hangout and scuttling across the gravel in earnest pursuit of the goodies to come before the net hits the water. Want to see a Cory smile? Dump in a large batch of live Bloodworm where he can reach it. Believe me, you will see that fish SMILE!

Again, you'll need to divert the attention of top and middle feeders if yours are a particularly active and ravenous bunch. Again, you do it quite simply as above - feed some of the live food in the usual way, dumping the freshly washed net contents into the aquarium, then press the spare uplift tube or turkey baster into service to give the Corys their share. Watch their eyes light up when you dump live Bloodworm right in front of their faces!

Incidentally, the Pandas in my aquarium are actually the dominant fishes. The Cardinals don't pose much of a problem, so I can just dump live food in with gay abandon and leave everyone to it, because the Pandas in my aquarium almost always get there first! The spare uplift tube is pressed into service in my aquarium when I feed Hikari wafers or similar to the Otocinclus - if I don't break up the wafers into small pieces, and scatter them about over a wide area to give the Otocinclus a chance, the Pandas might snaffle them all up first!

There you go, Cory Feeding 101.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002