[Paul E]

First post so be gentle with your replies;
Tonight I've watched our pair of Bronze Cory's start early for Valentines day ...lol and then lay a load of eggs both to the tank side and plant leaf.
My question what chance is there of any of the eggs surviving and becoming fry in a community tank, containing 2 of each Bronze, Peppered & Albino Cory's, 2 Bristlenose Catfish, 6 Micky Mouse Platy's, 6 Leopard Danio's and finally 7 Zebra Danio's.

 

[Amphitrite]

Hi Paul and welcome to the forum.

Firstly, congrats on the corys breeding. However, I wouldn't think the eggs have much chance of surviving with the tank inhabitants that you currently have.

I think the danios alone will eat them up pretty quickly. Do you have a spare tank currently set up?

 

[Paul E]

Thank you for reply it's all very new to me so guess it must be beginners luck or maybe not, yes I have recently set up a small tank in my den that I was thinking of putting a few guppy's in for a bit of colour, anyway after checking water quality it is as near as possible the same as main tank.

 

[fish_4_all]

My C. Trilineatus cories, (Julii) ate their own eggs so I started to remove them and place them in a net breeder. They did very well and I had a survival rate of over 85% with the eggs I removed. The tank should be just the trick while they are young if you want to succesfully hatch them. Just wait for about 6 hours after the eggs have been layed and lightly removed them by rolling them off the glass with a baster or pipette and suck them up. You can also use your finger and a small jar or cup to catch them but I couldn't keep from smashing them when I tried.

 

[Paul E]

update

Just thought I'd update what's been happen since I found my Bronze Cory laying eggs.
The eggs that had not been laid on the aquarium glass I removed to the small tank in my den, leaf and all securing to the bottom of tank. The very next day I spotted more eggs in the main tank on the plants but looking different from the original Cory spawning, again I removed a couple of leafs to the small tank and did a bit of reading .... oh boy reading can be dangeous ...lol apparently 3 to 4 days for cory eggs to hatch so Thursday & Friday regular checks found no little beady eyes look back at me I was starting to feel I'd fail as a dad...lol.
Then this morning we had a death in the family when one of the platy's was found to have passed away over night with no obvious reason, but the sorrow has been lifted tonight when a glance into the small tank and there appeared quite a few little (very little) fishes swimming around. I have no idea what they could be taking into account I had two different looking batches of eggs in there, will they survive no idea but hope is high again.

 

[Amphitrite]

That's great news Paul!

Do you have any pics, or are they too small?

 

[Paul E]

they really are small no chance of picture just yet, be sure I'll get some as soon as I can if they survive, must say I really hope they do because I want to know if it's the Cory eggs that have hatched or the others what ever they were.

 

[fish_4_all]

Congrats and have fun with your hand full. When my C. Trilineatus finally decided to spawn they did it off and on for 2 months. I could have had a huge nursery going if I had the room and the tanks to house them all.

Good idea removing the leaves and all to keep from damaging the eggs. It also gave the babies a source of food when they hatched.

I also wanted to add that cories with cross breed, might want to try and keep an eye on them to see which ones are spawning and fertilizing if you can to see if they are pure strains or a cross.

What do you plan to do with them? I only ask because there is a lot of breeders and keepers that want to keep the strains clean and selling them might hurt the strains if others want to breed the same species. That is if they are a cross breed.

 

[Paul E]

Well I have finally managed to get a few snaps of the little ones I'm still unable to determine just how many eggs hatched because they seem very apt at hiding but what I can say for sure is that there are at least 6. however there could be many more and the bigger they get the harder to hide ..lol.
The Bronze Cory's have again treated us to a courtship and egg laying show, and only the Bronze neither the Albino or the Peppered Cory's seem at all interested in any form of baby making :shock: .

 

[Amphitrite]

It's great to see a pic - and I'm really glad to hear that they are coming along well.

Out of interest, what are you feeding them?

 

[Paul E]

Hi, at first the only product I could find in my local store was "TetraMin baby" powder food but then while on a visit to a friend out of town I found some Liquifry No1 and have been feeding some of each for the last 4 days.
here's another one, my apologies for the poor photo quality but they are still very small and enlarging the crop part of photo tends to blur it a bit.

 

[Amphitrite]

Hiya Paul, how are the cory babys doing now?

 

[Paul E]

Hi, thanks for asking well lots of good news really. From the original egg laying we seem to have a total of eight that are growing very well will try to get some more pictures taken, we then had a second lot of eggs some on a couple of leafs that we moved to the small tank and we seem to have four babies from those eggs.
Only about a hour ago we were glancing at the main tank as one does ...lol when what should pop out from under the lump of bog wood but a baby Micky Mouse Platy, how on earth that has survived not being eaten by the adult fish in the tank we have no idea.
As you can guess since then we have been looking hard to see if there are any others but so far it seems not.