Tropical Fish Forums

[Dusko]

Hallo friends

I was researching alittle about corys in their natural habitat and came across these fabulous videos;

Corydoras in the Amazon

Corydoras in the Amazon 2

Corydoras in the Amazon 3

Wild Cory in Amazon

In this last video please observe the bottom being heavily covered with gravel.

Wild Cory in Amazon 2

It is fantastic to see these lovely cats in their natural habitat and how it varies from clear water to stained, sandy bottom to muddy or even gravely as we can see on the last video. And the shoals are HUGE

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[diademhill]

But did you notice they were not snuffling in the gravelly areas?

[Dusko]

Disturbed by the camera man
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[katienaha]

Gravely area?? the whole area is gravel.. just goes to show corydoras can live in rocks and gravel. I do notice most of those rocks are smooth though, likey from the moving water.
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Let the current take you where you may not always want to go.

[Dusko]

At the lfs I work at I keep Corys in different tanks on round gravel which is 2-8mm. I don't sell Corys that often which allows me to observe them up to 3 even 4 month depending on species and time of the year (summer not being that busy).

The Corydoras panda I purchased a few days ago were kept on gravel which is 3-5mm and they were in there for about 3 month (tank size 90 litres).
Their barbels are goregous and totaly intact, very long. Will try to make a nice photo.

I vacuum the gravel very rearly and if, I do not go deeper than 1cm into it. I am a firm believer that all this gunk in the bottom have a serious purpouse in balancing the system. The nature is full of such substrate gunk and the fish seem not to mind it. Let the anaerobic level be exactly that ... anaerobic.
Even though I don't vacuum often and the tanks are usualy heavily stocked these fish seem to be doing extremely fine. I even got the C. aeneus to lay eggs in the lfs aquarium

Now the pandas are moved into my home aquarium which has a fine sand 0.4-0.8mm. They are shifting it with gusto. Lets see how their barbels do in here and I post back at ya with results.

Both tanks were mature when the C. panda got introduced. I don't think anymore that finely uniformed gravel has anything to do with Cory barbel erosion. Immature set-ups maybe or/and weak circulation, high temperature...

Other cory sp I keep at work are C. sterbai, C. paleatus, C. aeneus, C. melini, C. adolfoi, C. trilineatus, C. panda, C. habrosus, C. pygmaeus and some albino too.

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[deborah_claro]

Only the area we are being shown in the video is gravelly. We have no idea how far that sort of bottom goes on for. It may be only a small fraction of the available bottom area.

I don't think we should draw too many conclusions from this video. It's not even clear what we are seeing.

Of course, there is gravel in fast moving streams. You have only to look down into a typical moving stream or creekbed to see the way the gravel settles in the center. I've noticed the gravel always moves to the center of the moving water and the rest of the bottom to the shores settles out into mud. Usually it's a sandy sort of mud.

Hope to see those photos soon, Dusko! Keep the topic alive!
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[rales12]

I love seeing videos like these, thanks for sharing, Dusko!

Although, seeing those enormous schools... it definitely makes me feel that a school of 5-6 in an aquarium isn't large enough, and I'll be keeping that in mind when I am considering the number of cories for my tank.
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- Rachel

[unissuh]

It really does put how tiny a shoal of 5-6 are in perspective.

Keeping a Corydoras shoal is still something on my "want to do, but no room" list. Perhaps if I can find room for a decently sized tank somewhere.
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Fishing in the Rivers of Light

[mkristo]

Does anyone have experience with Corys and Turface substrate? I'm starting up a planted 75g and plan on a shoal of 12-15 julii cories. The guy at the LFS (very experienced and active in local aquarium club, not big box rookie) suggested the substrate and assured me the cories will do fine. I bought a 50lb bag ($17) and see that the individual pieces vary in size up to 3mm. I do think it's possible to do some sifting and create areas at the front of the tank where they don't get larger than 2mm. Would that help or is it just a waste of time?

[Dusko]

Most Cory keepers will advice to get sand with max size of 0,4mm but in my experience I see no barbel erosion on corys kept in my tanks having finely uniformed gravel 3-5mm.

What I feel is more important is to wait with Corys 3-4 month before adding the. Wait for the setup to mature first.
Avoid high temps. Create good circulation/filtration/oxygenation.

Others might have more to add.

Friendly
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