Those Darn Paleatus Are Molesting My Red Lazers!

[Polardbear]

Christmas eve was a very long night for me. My Christmas present from the BF was a new 29 gallon tank - yeah! It's still sitting in the garage though because I needed to do some water changes and rearranging before I had a place to put it. Earlier in the morning I had decided to move some of my betta spawn out of the 20 long and into a 10 gallon since they were a lot smaller than their siblings, I realized right after I moved them that, oops, all my fry sitters - I mean all my C. Paleatus were already gainfully employed. I decided to pull a few of the C. Leucomelas out of the 55 gal tank (it's about time they got jobs!) which of course required removal of all plants and ornaments in order to catch them. Figured I might as well give it a water change since everything was out already and the plants were looking kind of ratty. Then I had the brilliant idea to swap some of the plants with ones from my 50 gallon tank. So that meant all the plants had to get pulled out of the 50 gallon and then all of them got a good cleaning in some bleach and of course a water change for the 50 gallon tank as well.

It was getting late, going on midnight before I finally got all the tanks back together and as I went to feed everyone there dinner before turning off their lights I suddenly noticed something not right with one of my female swordtails in the 55 gal tank. Oh no! Little white sprinkles of salt on her fins - I couldn't believe it - Ich! I haven't had an outbreak of Ich in 3 years. Now I'm starting to panic, but then I remembered that I had a bottle of Quick Cure in my medicine collection. Only problem is the tank with Ich has my red lazers in it (well, not the only problem, this tank also has all my albino swordtails in it). The rest of the Leucomelas were also in there. I didn't want to risk the corys with the Ich med so then I had to figure out where I could quickly relocate 9 corys to without putting anyone else at risk. I finally opted to move my female bettas out of their 10 gallon community (which they share with 3 of the C. Paleatus) and into temporary tupperware and I also had another 10 gallon that had swordtail fry and another trio of C. Paleatus that I could partially free up. Rounding up the 6 female bettas and doing a w/c on that tank wasn't bad but catching 40 some swordtail fry was a whole nother story. By 3:00 am I was finally ready to start relocating corys and of course had to once again remove all the plants and ornaments from the 55 gallon in order to catch the little guys. It only took another hour to get the 4 C. Leucomelas settled in with their new Paleatus friends in one tank and the 5 Red Lazers intoduced to their Paleatus roomates.

Before releasing the Red Lazers though I took some photos in hopes that Inchworm might be able to take a guess at their sexes. Being the uncooperative little brats that they are it only took 96 shots to get 7 that might be usable.

At last around 4:30 am I sat down to rest for a moment and glanced over to check on the Red Lazers and what do I spy? Those darn randy little Paleatus are swarming all over the Red Lazers trying to get them to spawn! The poor Red Lazers are looking extremely confused, the Paleatus female is getting in on the action as well, I think she's jealous that her males are chasing someone else and I'm having nightmare visions of what sort of demon spawn they could produce! (Pictures Paleatus markings glowing neon red...)

So, Inchworm, if you happen to read this, here are some group shots of the Red Lazers. I know I've got at least some females now but can you guess if any might be males?

 

[Inchworm]

Hi Polardbear

It sounds like you had quite a Christmas Eve this year! I'm exhausted just by reading about it.

Your red lazers are beautiful and healthy looking fish. Lazer corys are usually more slender than the bronze or albino C. aeneus, and it's often harder to tell the genders apart. I can tell that you have at least two males and two females, but there is one that I'm not sure about.

Looking at the last picture you posted, going counter clockwise, it would be Female, Male, Male, ?, Female.

That other one looks long and broad like it could be female, but is slender like a male. We'll have to wait and see.

I doubt that you have to worry too much about them spawning with the peppered corys. They are hard enough to get to spawn with their own kind. It would look pretty bad if they did though.

I hope your other fish get over the ich quickly.

 

[Polardbear]

Thanks Inchworm, I'm really happy to know I've got both sexes. I think those randy little Paleatus males may have started something though. The Lazers have been in a cleaning/swarming/nuzzling frenzy all day now. I've never seen them this active and touching each other so much. I think they are thinking about spawning! The Paleatus threesome spawns at the drop of a hat so they may be encouraging the Lazers. The crew has thoroughly cleaned every inch of glass, the decorations and the plants with heavy emphasis on the glass right behind the filter intake tube. Also the Lazer's coloring has really intensified - the ones I think are females have gone a dark chocolate brown and their red stripes are really bright while the males are almost a glowing golden yellow shade with super bright stripes.

The tank's temperature was around 79 degrees when I moved them in and I unplugged the heater but it's only dropped down to 77 degrees. I've got some water sitting out cooling down and hopefully can do a colder water change later tonight if needed to encourage them even more. Judging from their activity level though, they may just spawn on their own. I'm so excited watching them though I'm not getting a whole lot of anything done.

I'm torn between pulling the Paleatus out of the tank or leaving them there for encouragement. The 2 Paleatus males are absolutely the randiest little corys I've ever seen. I've actually seen them try to entice a swordtail into spawning with them - you should have seen that poor swordie girls reaction to them piling on top of her head! Also the Paleatus female is a serious egg eater. I'm just going to keep watching though and play it by ear, I don't want to interrupt them at this point. I also don't really have any place to move them to right now unless I can find some place to set up the new tank temporarily.

Keep your fingers crossed!

 

[Inchworm]

Hi Polardbear

Seventy seven degrees F. is really too warm a temperature even to keep either of those two species of corys. They both prefer cooler for regular living.

If you are lucky, you might get the peppered corys to spawn and having their hormones in the water might induce the lazers to spawn too. There is evidence that it sometimes works with difficult species. I have my C. nattereri in with my black corys, in hopes that it will work for them, but so far it hasn't done anything to encourage them. I only have one male with three females, so that might be the problem too.

I hope you are successful with getting the lazers to spawn. I haven't been so far, but I'm not going to stop thinking they might some day.

 

[Polardbear]

I normally try to keep their tanks around 74-75 but we had a warm Christmas. The house temperature was at 80 degrees with the doors open and the heater off and I wasn't going to turn on the A/C. My water comes out of the tap at 82 degrees right now (even at 3:00 in the morning) so getting the temp down is taking some effort. I've had a fan on them for about 4 hours and it's finally down to 75 degrees.

 

[Inchworm]

Hi Polardbear

Oops! I forgot you live in Arizona. )