Recovering of Corydoras barbels

[adnan]

Hi everyone!
Just a quick question
Recently I bought 10 Corydoras fish- 4 Corydoras Melanistus, 4 Corydoras Sterbai and 2 Corydoras Adolfoi. They are in 17-18 gallons fish tank with good water parameters, white soft sand, microsorum plants and no any other inhabitants. All they are active, eating well. The problem is that when I put the corys in the tank I noticed that 2 of my Corydoras Sterbai are with damage barbels, or with other words the barbels are simply missing. So is it possible after a while the barbels of these particular fish to be recovered?
Thanks in advance!

[MarlonnekeW]

Yes, they can recover. Three months ago I bought 9 C. loxozonus, which all turned out to have badly damaged babels. This is what they looked like when I bought them:


And this is what they looked like after only two months or so:


Soft zand and good water parameters are of course very important, but I also gave them food with some garlic in it from Dr. Bassleer biofoods as an anti-bacterial ingrediënt.

[adnan]

Thanks Marlon, that is really useful info for me! By the way, your Corydoras are looking excellent!

Here is a picture of my Corydoras tank ;)

[adnan]

Oh, I forgot to add- usually I feed my Corydoras with frozen artemia, Hikari sinking wafers and with Northfin pellets for cichlids lol, they love it, plus some flakes for catfish. I'm interested about dr. Bassleer bio, antibacterial fish food, sounds quality food for Corydoras.

[MarlonnekeW]

I feed them twice a day. In the morning 5 days a week different kinds of frozen food and the other two days Viformo and in the evening mostly Bassleer. I'm not a big fan of tablets (if I feed them, I break them into little pieces first) because I think it's better for them if they have to work a little for their food .

I really like the Bassleer food. There are a lot of different varieties and you can buy every variety in different sizes. When I noticed that the barbels were damaged, I sent an e-mail to the company address asking what variety would be best for this situation and Dr. Bassleer answered it himself (he's a fish doctor) and gave me advise on how to help my fish. That was very nice of him.

Your tank looks great, but I would maybe add a few more plants or some wood so they have a little bit more cover. I used some spiderwood so that they have spots to hide but also lots of free space to swim en look for food in the substrate.

[adnan]

Thank you for your advices Marlon!
I check out about dr.Bassleer's products, great stuff indeed but it's probably new brand and still missing in UK and Ireland, online the postage from Germany is minimum 12.90£ which means two/three times more expensive than the fish food itself. Hopefully soon this particular fish foot will come in U.K. as well.
About the hiding place in the tank, I really appreciate that advice. Well, definitely soon I'm planning to do some re-arranging, hopefully more woods and plants will provide some hiding places for my fish.
My Corys are still juveniles, 2/2,5cm, still growing, and for couple of months I will feed them every day except on Sunday.

[adnan]

Actually about the hiding places for my Corys (which is mandatory for this type of fish) I have an idea- well my tank is nano tank 17/18 gallons with 10 Corydoras which means that it is almost over stock. If I put more woods and rocks means that I will take more space, more volume in the tank which is not good at all. Well my idea to deal with this problem is simple- I already have 2 bog woods in the tank, and under them I'm going to put some small flat rocks to use like columns, so I will rise the woods 1+inch high, and I believe it will have some space for hiding under the bog woods. Off course I will try to do that safe enough for corys.

[MarlonnekeW]

I had the same problem; how can I give them places to hide but still enough free bottom space.

This is what I have come up with so far:


I only use wood with a root structure, that needs minimal contact with the substrate, so it works sort of like an umbrella. A lot of hiding spaces but also a lot of room to move around.

The cory's also really seem to like the rocks. Somehow they work as hiding places as well. Maybe they think they blend in with the rocks or something, because if they are in this area of the tank and I walk up to it, they don't swim away. Before I put the rocks in, they were gone within a second.

In The Netherlands we have a German do-it-yourself store that sells colored sand which has the same size as the pool filter sand I use. I decided to mix some black with the filter sand, so it gets a bit darker. This week I added some more black sand and it's now up to my cory's to mix it together.

[adnan]

Wow, your tank is incredible! Great job! The sand is natural looking and the plants are green without any algae. That idea with the roots is really clever. With other words it's really comfortable place for Corydoras fish.
Soon I'll re-arrange my tank- well, it will look pretty the same interior except the caves I'm going to make. Plus soon I want to put some pistia plants on the surface of the tank, their roots make the tank view more natural, and as well that will reflect to the light, it will be smooth which is welcome for Corydoras fish. Hopefully I will manage to take care of this particular plant.

[adnan]

Quick update.
So, the barbels of these particular corydoras are recovering well Everything is normal so far, they are active, eating well.

[MarlonnekeW]

Really great to hear that your fish are recovering and doing well. Good job!!!

[adnan]

Thanks Marlon!
Probably I will add another couple of plants- bucephalandra plant, similar to anubias and also hopefully in 2-3 months half of the top of my tank will be covered with pistia plants, the roots make the vision so natural as well as this root cover gives some sense of protection to cory fish.

[bekateen]

They look really nice. Congratulations.

Cheers, Eric

[adnan]

Thank you Eric!

[adnan]

Hi corydoras keepers!
I don't want to open a new topic so I'll continue here, hope it is ok!
So my nano tank is around 20 gallons but clearly 17/18 gallons of water. So at the moment I have 10 cory fish but I am planning to put 5 red crystal or 5 red liri shrimps, plus 3 pink pearl ramshorn snails, and the snails are because of the shrimps, they need some bacteria produced by snails. What do you think, is the tank will be over over stock. Usually I change 70/80% of water weekly. By the way soon the tank will be really well planted- pistia, couple of types of anubias, plenty of microzorum fern and some bucefalandra plant. I know that someone will advise me to put some java moss for shrimps but I think that the roots of microzorum fern do the same job for them.

Some pictures, feeding time ;)

[adnan]

What's the current situation in my nano tank- as I planned I put some Shrimps, only 5, and 3 Red Pearl Ramshorn Snails.
Well I choose Red Rili Shrimps simply because they are tough enough, not demanding compared to Red Crystal Shrimps which requires special conditions.
So that are my first shrimps in my experience as aquarist, I never thought that they are so tiny. Well so far my tank isn't very overstocked as I was imagining, which is great
The 17/18 gallon nano tank is set with- 10 gorgeous Corydoras, 5 tiny Shrimps and 3 Snails. The rest is good care and maintenance

Couple of pictures for better ideas what I'm talking about:

The Shrimps


The Corydaras

[adnan]

Quick update. Today changed the lighting tube suitable for fish and plants. So far everything is going well.

[bekateen]

Your tank is lovely. Needs more corys. LOL

Cheers, Eric

[adnan]

Thanks Eric, appreciate!
At the moment there are 10 Corydoras in 17/18 gallon tank, I wish I can put more but I afraid it will be overstocked.

[bekateen]

Oh, okay. The tank looked bigger.

[adnan]

Ok, just to add some info about my tank. So everything is going not too bad so far except I lost 3 of my 5 shrimps. The water parameters are perfect but I think the reason is that weekly I usually change 70-80% of the tank water and that is absolutely dangerous for shrimps, unfortunately I found out that recently. Of course that will be corrected.
And the other thing I added a small school of lampeye killifish, they are less than an inch at the moment.
Of course the focus on this tank are corydoras fish.

Some pictures for better idea what I am talking about.

[adnan]

Ok folks, these are the last pictures for this topic.

Feeding time for some of the corys the others are hiding somewhere between the plants.



The barbels are getting much better, almost recovered.

[bekateen]

I still like this tank.

[adnan]

Thanks Eric!