Anyone better?

All posts regarding the care and breeding of these catfishes from South America.
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Troender
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Anyone better?

Post by Troender »

Yesterday I got my largest spawning shock ever. My group c. schultzei has a habit of spawning quite a lot of eggs when they spawn. They've only spawned twice before, and has given me about 100 fry all together. They've been saving up eggs (and I've overfed them pretty much) for a few months now, and yesterday there was a very recognizable movement in their tank. The reason why they spawn so rarely (to be c. schultzei at least) is that they live together with several other cory species. Normally the other cories eat most eggs, but they have the strange habit of not touching schultzei eggs. They didn't touch them yesterday either, which I am not so happy about today...

As I had my parents visiting me yesterday (I haven't seen them since the 3rd of January), I had no chance of keeping an eye on the spawning cories (and cories tend to spawn when it suits me the least). In the evening I finally went into my bedroom for a look. Well, there were eggs. And there were more eggs! And the more I looked, the more eggs I found! :shock: They were piled up in large clumps. I'm never able to resist picking out cory eggs, and I couldn't resist it yesterday either. To make it easier, I picked all the leafs the eggs were laid on, and transferred them into the icecream boxes where I usually hatch cory eggs. At the same time I counted them. I had suspected that there would be about 300 eggs. Well, I was wrong...

My group of 10-12 c. schultzei had spawned more than 600 eggs! :eek: :eek: :eek: And I had been stupid enough to pick them all! :embar: One of the leafs I had picked, alone contained more than 120 eggs (see pics)! How am I going to house 600 fry if they all hatch? Well, actually house 700-800 fry, to be honest. Because I already have sterbai, trilineatus atropersonatus and duplicareus fry, and I even managed to pick 70-90 trilineatus eggs yesterday too (after I picked the 600+ How stupid am I? :screwy: ).

Well, about 700 eggs in one day is quite a catch. And my poor, not-fish-interested parents had to deal with a cory owner in great shock all evening! :chuckle: I just couldn't stop talking about it for the rest of the evening. I have never ever seen anything like it. 10-12 c. schultzei produced almost twice as many eggs as my group of C-140 (which is about the same size - the group, not the size of the cories :wink: ).

Here are some pics of the leaf that contained more than 120 eggs. It doesn't look so much, but there certainly were so many when I counted them.

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Most of the eggs looks fertile too. I've never before wished that some eggs must go bad. Today I do...
andywoolloo
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Re: Anyone better?

Post by andywoolloo »

wow! Your cories really went to town! :thumbsup:

I know how scary it is tho with too many eggs. My BN's are very active.

Good luck with that! If you do not want all the eggs can you feed to another one of your fish tanks or does no fish eat those kind of cory eggs? And I wonder why that is?
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Troender
Posts: 83
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My cats species list: 29 (i:0, k:0)
Location 1: Askim, Norway

Re: Anyone better?

Post by Troender »

Yes, they had quite a party here yesterday. :cheers: :lol:

I have no idea why the other cories don't touch schultzei eggs. Last time the schultzeis spawned, it was the same: no eggs were eaten. And my c. leopardus/C-102 (I'm not sure of their ID) usually eat everything that looks like eggs. They are like vacuum cleaners when it's spawning time in the tank. :chuckle: But they don't seem to like schultzei eggs, as they don't touch them at all. The only explaination I can come up with is that my schultzeis put all of their eggs close to the water surface, and the other cories are very found of staying at the bottom.
Inger Anne
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Just think how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are even stupider! -George Carlin

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Bas Pels
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Re: Anyone better?

Post by Bas Pels »

Troender wrote: And my poor, not-fish-interested parents had to deal with a cory owner in great shock all evening!
Let them be happy you have a hobby which need you te lead a rather decent life - to pay the bills for energy, water and so on

Just a worry less for them :lol:
cats have whiskers
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Troender
Posts: 83
Joined: 29 Apr 2007, 19:34
My cats species list: 29 (i:0, k:0)
Location 1: Askim, Norway

Re: Anyone better?

Post by Troender »

It looks like all the eggs but one hatced. That means more than 600 little ones! :shock: And as I have bred schultzeis before, I know that most of them will survive until adulthood. I am trying to imagine how I am going to house 600 extra cories. :eek:

Well, here are some of the herd:
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Inger Anne
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Just think how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are even stupider! -George Carlin

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