Corydoras unknown species

[TheNorm]

Hi everyone,

I visited a Pets at Home shop today to buy some snails for one of my tanks (as weirdly they have a really good range of snails) and spotted about 7 small (probably juvenile) Corydoras with 2 adult Bronze Corys in a tank labelled as only holding Bronze Corys. They are really dark and a solid colour and didn’t feel right for Bronze to me, but I’m no catfish expert. I’ve kept bronze before, though have no experience of juveniles of this species. The three fish that I bought were typical of the seven. From nose to tip of tail approx 2cm (the bronze in the tank were 3 times the size at least). They are uniformally very dark brown, almost black and not shiney at all, with a rich brown fin colour. They have slightly lighter bellies.

Are these juvenile Bronze Corys do you think, or have I got something a bit different and if so, which Cory do you think I have please?

Thanks


Lewis

[Jools]

Check out

Corydoras schultzei

/



Jools

[TheNorm]

Check out

Corydoras schultzei

/

Definitely could be juveniles of C. schultzei thanks. What’s the difference between them and C. aeneus Black (if indeed it does exist, as seems to be questioned in a number of threads)?

Thanks

Lewis

[Fundulopanchax76]

Interestingly i have shultzei - black venezuela - one of them changed its color to normal yesterday i met him. Never heard that before.

[Karsten S.]

Hi,

C. schultzei is officially considered to be a synonym of C. aeneus.
Most aquarists (including me) have a different opinion. The form that we usually call C. schultzei is AFAIK from Colombia and is quite different from the original form of C. aeneus from Trinidad (which is usually not available in the trade).
Real C. aeneus from Trinidad look like this:



"Black Venezuela" is a wrong trade name for these blackish corys. The black form the you have is a man made strain of these C. schultzei, so I always call them C. schultzei "black".

Cheers,

[TheNorm]

Thanks everyone. Taxonomically it would seem to be a bit of a mess, but I was confident that I didn’t have a typical Bronze, which is fine.

[Jools]

The "black venezuela" got mixed up as Shane, Don Kinyon and I were discussing a black C. aeneus type from the Venezuelan Llanos at the same time the black cory discussed here was being pushed internationally from European breeders around 2004 IIRC). The two got mixed up and the fish got called venezuela black which is not helpful as it's not from there.

I asked Ian to provide a CW number for the Llanos fish so this confusion could be documented, but it didn't happen. The llanos fish is most similar to the Trinidad "original" but is darker.


Jools

[Shane]

In hopes of adding additional good info on the black cory from the llanos, I had several hours of collecting these fish converted from video tape to dvd. Now I just need to figure out how to upload video. Maybe this is something Jools and I can do next time I visit.
-Shane

[Jools]

I sent you an email on this Shane, will pick up offline. However, hope to be in DC March too.

Jools

[Fundulopanchax76]

So does somebody know till now Corydoras schultzei black to change its color ?