Breeding Pygmy Cories...

[Mcbenthy]

My corydoras will attach eggs to anything: Glass, leaves, filter intake, heater. The only places they don't seem to like laying eggs is on the driftwood or rocks. The really successful batch of eggs that made it to maturity were laid on a pennywort, and I just took that whole plant into a net and set it under the outflow of the filter in the fry tank. I ended up with 13 fry altogether that lived (3 died for mysterious reasons) and they're still thriving. Just put them back in the adult tank.

So you put the eggs under the filter outflow (how much flow is too much?) in a breeding net, let them grow in there for a couple of weeks and then re-introduce?

 

[Harlequins]

Excellent read and thanks for pointing me in this direction!

Can you help and tell me where abouts you found the eggs? are they similar to other cories and attach the eggs to glass etc?

Some eggs were on the glass,but mostly on the cabomba plant,lots were hidden in there

Once the eggs hatched, i put them into the fry tank

 

[Mcbenthy]

Excellent read and thanks for pointing me in this direction!

Can you help and tell me where abouts you found the eggs? are they similar to other cories and attach the eggs to glass etc?

Some eggs were on the glass,but mostly on the cabomba plant,lots were hidden in there

Once the eggs hatched, i put them into the fry tank

Ok, good to hear! The tank I have has a large amount of cabomba in it, whichis constantly being pruned, so moving strands of that to a fry tank would be easy.

I imagine a set up that would be very nice for my situation would be having a fry tank that is well lit, couple of rocks covered in ricca, and planting egged cabomba into the sand there, leave the eggs to hatch and fry to grow until they are big enough to move back home, so to speak.

Do you think the young cories would be able and willing to eat hatchlings? in that case I may use gravel or similar.. hmmm

 

[Harlequins]

Young corys will be no different than the adults,if it fits their mouth,they'll eat it!! i've had mixed ages in my fry tank before now and the newly hatched have disappeared if theres older siblings in there...

So learnt my lesson with that one

Don't use gravel,use sand... i use to keep the newly hatched separate,by moving the older ones to another tank or keep the new ones in a net until they'll be big enough not to get munched.

 

[Mcbenthy]

Young corys will be no different than the adults,if it fits their mouth,they'll eat it!! i've had mixed ages in my fry tank before now and the newly hatched have disappeared if theres older siblings in there...

So learnt my lesson with that one

Don't use gravel,use sand... i use to keep the newly hatched separate,by moving the older ones to another tank or keep the new ones in a net until they'll be big enough not to get munched.

Hmmm... in that Caee I may have a tricky system to try and get working!lol

I may try using a longer tank, with a netted off section as a hatchery, and move them after 1/2 weeks into the general fry population:
------Water-------Net
|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~x~~~~~~~~~|
|~~~~~~~~Growing out fry~x~~~Eggs~~|
|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~x~~~~~+~~~|
|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~x~~Cabomba~|
|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~x~~~~~~~~~|
|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~x~~~~~~~~~|
|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~x~~~~~~~~~|

I am aware it would be much easier with several tanks, but I don't have space for that and there's a lot of these guys, if 1/3 turn out female and they start spawning every week, that's a lot of eggs

EDIT: apologies for the crude ASCII depiction of a tank...

 

[Harlequins]

They wont start breeding until around 8 months old,by that time if you do have loads just sell them on,if i ended keeping all my cory babies i would have hundreds by now

Ideal solution apart from a separate tank is either a hang on breeding net in the tank, or put several moss balls in the tank,fry do hide in/under these and feed off them also