I woke up this morning to find some batches of bronze cory eggs on the glass and some leaves. And I don't know what to do with them! I've never actually bred fish before, so I might use these as a test run to see if I can raise them successfully before trying my hand at breeding goldfish. I've spent all day keeping the rams horn snails off them, so I'm going to do some web research and see if I can transfer them to the spare tank.

After about 6 hours, the centres began darkening so I'm assuming out of this particular batch all except just a couple look fertilized.

Well, a bit of reading and I think I know why they spawned today, when they never did before. The wikipedia says that they spawn in nature when it rains, which explains a lot. The tank had too much CO2 building up so I adjusted the spray bar last night to point up out of the water and spray back down (to diffuse the CO2 out faster). This must have simulated rain to the little fishies! Up until yesterday the spray bar was always just under the surface so the surface smooth and quiet.

PS. It also says to wait 24 hours for the eggs to harden enough before moving them. I don't trust the snails with them overnight, so I'll move them late tonight I think. Gives me time to set up the spare tank!

Here's the Mum. At least, I think she is. She's a long-finned Bronze Cory (an extra long dorsal fin).

Wow, that really interesting. Please keep us updated on the eggs. How long do they take to hatch?

I have no idea, Sushi! From what I've been reading, it could be anything between three to five days.

I'm not even sure they'll hatch now after my clumsy attempts to remove them from the glass and put them in the spare tank. They were very sticky and seemed too soft so I'm worried I must have hurt them.

I moved mine after only about 2-3 hours when they were still soft (didnt know you're supposed to wait) and had 90% hatch rate so you shouldnt have a problem
Those pics are GREAT! you can see the little fishies inside!

aaaaat about 26 degrees celcius mine hatched on the fourth or fifth day I think.. after a couple of days you will see them moving about in the eggs.. they do summersaults and stuff

So cool! They're hatching! My first babies.

I haven't got a light on the tank, so tonight I had a look in with a torch and was dismayed to see a lot of the eggs had gone gray and soft, and some had stuff growing on them. But then I moved the torch over to the back corner and there's a bunch of little things squiggling! And the 'stuff' growing on the other eggs turned out to be the tails of more little fishies struggling to break out of their eggs!

So right now as I'm typing, about a third have hatched, a third are in the actual process of hatching and a third are still eggs. And it's only been three days so I wasn't expecting them so soon! The water temp is about 27C, so maybe that speeded them up. What do I feed them! So many little mouths to feed! They're so tiny!

weeeeeee
I fed mine on Liquifry food. I think you can give the baby brine shrimp and microworms.. stuff like that. But liquifry first as you dont really have time to set up live food cultures. You wont need to feed them for about 3 days as they will use their yolk sacs up in that time

she is a very pretty girl..I have a male and female blue catfish. Good luck with the eggs!

Yeah babies. Congrats. I love cories. hope they hatch for you

Thanks! Most of them have hatched now. There are still some struggling out of their eggs, but there are so many babies already. At least fifty, probably a lot more. Too many!

Thanks Lucy, I went and bought some Liquifry. It says it's not actually food for the fish, but food for tiny Infusoria which the fish then eat. So I've started adding it now so there'll be some Infusoria ready when they use up their yolk!

cool
If you have any moss or something, wack that in the tank with them as it will have tons of infusoria type creatures living on it.

Woo-Hoo,Babies!!! Congrats!
Yolk is good for feeding but very very messy on params in the tank.The best thing to start with on the babies is some newly hatched Brine Shrimp-they love them.I also added alot of plants from other tanks that were up and established.It's amazing how much food can come off of them.What size tank are they in,and what kind of filter are you using?

Although Cories are tough little bugger's,their beginning stages are tender.Be careful on large amounts of water changing while they're very young/and make sure to evenly match temps too.
I use sponge filter's on those little guys,but you really have to keep watch,and keep the tank clean.Between Cories and Pristlenose Pleco's,I have a house of babies.
Good luck and you'll have to show us pics as soon as you can.

That is great that most of them hatched. Would love to see some pics of you new babies when they get big enough

Thanks! Here they are at 3 days old. Very difficult to photograph because they're so small! And also because there's no light on their tank.

This is just a small bunch of them in the back left corner. Probably half are bunched up in a pile in the other corner, while the rest are spread around the rest of the tank like this. Too many to count! Maybe 50 to 100 at a guess.



And here's the best I can manage so far with a close up - a three day old Long-finned Bronze Cory!



So how do I clean all the debris building up on the bottom without siphoning all the little bubs away too!

Devs, they're in the 2' spare tank (not spare any more!), with one of those above-tank sump filters. There's a big pre-filter sponge over the intake to stop them getting sucked up, which you can just see the reflection of in the second pic.

PS. Their tank is set up on the floor in front of the Ryukin tank, and they swarmed on the stray goldfish pellets I accidently dropped in their tank while feeding the big guys. I need to feed them more!

awww they are so little and cute!!

I used a turkey baster to clean up, when I had my guppy fry

I'm thinking now I don't know why I bothered setting up a separate nursery tank for the cory fry. I was making plans to pull apart the planted tank to convert it into a goldie tank and I glance at the canister filter which has semi-transparent plastic sides and I see this.



Something squiggling around inside it. It's late at night so it's hard to see, but there's definitely quite a few in there. The light I shined on them scared them all to the other side of the filter. I must have missed a batch of eggs or two and these babies got sucked up by the filter.

And these ones look at least twice as big already as the ones I have in the nursery tank! They must be getting a lot of food in there! Here's a closer look at one, and it's already almost like a miniature catfish while the nursery ones still look like fry.



So I needn't have bothered! Just let the filter suck up all the new-borns!

So then I take a torch and scour the hairgrass in the tank and I see more surviving by hiding in the grass. So I'll have to put my plans of tearing this tank apart on hold for a while, I think. The ones in the grass aren't as big as the the one in the filter, more the same size as those in the nursery tank - so my conclusion is that the filter is the best place to raise cory fry!

LOL! how cool! That filter one looks the same size as mine after about a month! ..I spose you will have to get them out before they get too big as they might get stuck!

Two week birthday pic!



Is this a Bronze Cory? It must be some sort of juvenile camouflage colouring, I guess. Some are over 1cm long already like the one in the pic, while others still look like 3 day old fry.

Of the eggs I moved into a separate tank that hatched, there are about 20 left. Probably another 20 or so have perished. I think I've overfed them or something. Or maybe underfed them. I don't know what happened to the rest, just disappeared!

There were about another 20 insde the filter who were all bigger than the ones in the separate tank. So obviously a better place to raise fry! I've pulled that tank apart to make room for goldies, so I just put those ones into my other planted tank with best wishes for their survival hiding amongst the plants.

awww cute That is a bronze cory, mine had that band over their eyes too

Well, the little ones from the filter which I put in the main tank seemed to be doing better than the ones in the special tank, so I just added the others to the main tank too. Here's the tank, where you can see one of the babies. It's very small, lol.



A bit closer pic might be better. (hint: it's sitting on top of the sandstone wall). There's actually about half a dozen in this pic, but you can't see them because they blend in with the dark substrate. PS. I just fed this tank, so that's food flakes scattered about.

I see him,he looks beautiful! I just love those little babies!They always seem to do much better in the main tank.

aww the babies are looking great (so is the tank!)
..mine spawned again yesterday, I had a count and theres about 500 eggs.. then they layed more in the night! Dont have room to raise this lot though.

Beautiful babies and a beautiful tank Do your black neons and cardinals school together?