Gold laser and albino corys interbreeding!!!

[Corycory]

I haven't updated this thread in years!!! But thought some might be interested to hear updates about my "hybrids". I am not so sure after all if a cross between a gold laser and aeneus albino can be called a hybrid, they seem to be the similar species, just different habitat in nature.

All the offspring have been doing great in a large 5f tank of their own alongside their albino siblings from the same batch with a few livebearers for company.

They didn't spawn the first year, not much the 2nd year but they really got into it the last half a year and produced a mass spawn recently which was beautiful to watch as I happened to be near the tank and it was before lights on. Everyone was buzzing and rushing around the place. Then everyone was rushing eating all the eggs too

But the interesting part is that the cross group which has albino/gold laser parents and look green as in the video below, are now again breeding interchangeably with their pure albino siblings. I am tempted to save just a few eggs to see if the "hybrids" are fertile or not.

Apart from that, the two colour groups stay sort of separated, albino bunch stays on the left side of a 5f tank and the hybrid bunch stays on the right side of the tank so they like sticking to their own colour variant most of the time.

And please rest assured none of these have gone out my main door or ever will unless I move out so they'll move with me. However, they are beautiful and healthy fish to have and are as normal as any other cory fish can be. The females

Here is an updated video of some of them in their current home:

[Supercorygirl]

Same species, provided your albino are albino aeneus and not albino sterbai. The lasers are classified under aeneus (corydorasworld.com), so not hybrids but just a washed out coloration of the gold laser would be the result.

[Corycory]

Yes, obviously the result is washed out gold laser variant as you can see on the video. A few years ago when that happened I didn't get a definite response. Someone mentioned that gold lasers could be corydoras melanotaenia http://www.planetcatfish.com/common/ima ... e_id=12982

I don't know and not very worried about it. But they surely interbreed without making difference despite that the parents both have their own groups of males and females. The kids mix up as readily as the parents who are in another tank still producing eggs.

The albinos are all aeneus. I have 3 sterbai in the tank, one female and two males and they spawn between themselves only so they know who they are

I am just curious though about all those "gold shoulder" type of corys I've actually seen sold in the fish shops under different sort of names, if they aren't all produced same as my cories accidentally did, and then just sold for something caught in nature...

[Supercorygirl]

I picked the same at a petsmart sold as bronze with gold blotch on shoulder and blue eyes, chalked them upto a mix of the Schultz either and bronze hybrid. Out of the 3 that survived I ended up with 2 females and a male but they never did show any inclination to spawn.

Sorry for some reason my phone only showed the first page instead of whole thread.

[Corycory]

I couldn't get your answer. Do you mean the ones you bought in petsmart crossed with the Shultz and produced hybrids or they were hybrids themselves, and don't spawn?

Mine certainly spawn. Next step is to save a few eggs just to see but I want wait around the tank for that and pick the ones from the "hybrids" only. I may do it during the summer months now if I am not too lazy.

[Corycory]

I managed to grab 3-4 eggs today from one of the "hybrid" females before they got eaten. I am not sure who the daddy is though, could be an albino or a hybrid.
Anyway, I have them in a breeder box, we'll see. They might not be viable but I want to see if they can produce a viable offspring and what it will look like. If it doesn't work out I'll collect a few more eggs again since they seem to be in a mood these days.

[Corycory]

The 4 eggs all appear viable. It's been about 2 days. From previous experience it takes 3 days for them to hatch.

Here's a pic of one of the eggs right now. I added some sand in the breeder box to have it ready in case they hatch.

[Corycory]

Well guys, the first batch of eggs hatched but nothing survived because the breeder box was hanging on my quarantine tank and I happened to buy a baby clown loach with ich which had to be treated in that same tank. Once it's all clear, I'll collect more eggs. It won't be before the summer as I don't have much time right now but I'll update as soon as I have any results.
Even if both gold laser and aeneus are distinct relatives, they surely have genetic differences so it will be interesting what sort of offspring their hybrids produce.

Should I try collecting eggs between a hybrid and a hybrid or between a hybrid and pure aeneus? I only want to grow 3-4 corys, nothing more than this. Only for experimental purposes.

[Karsten S.]

Hi,

Same species, provided your albino are albino aeneus and not albino sterbai. The lasers are classified under aeneus (corydorasworld.com), so not hybrids but just a washed out coloration of the gold laser would be the result.

sorry, but this is nonsense and I'm very sure that you will not find anything at CW like this.
These corys are definitely hybrids, there is no doubt about that.

Gold lasers (CW010) belong to the aeneus group but they are not identical to Corydoras aeneus.
The different laser variants are close relatives and some scientist might decide in future to lump the laser variants into one species or split them into several but they are (acc. genetic analysis) not very closely related to neither C. aeneus (from Trinidad) nor C. melanotaenia.

It's good to read that you will not spread the offspring. It would certainly be of some interest to know if the hybrids are fertile or not.

Cheers,

[Corycory]

Thanks for the info Karsten. Good to know.

And yes, the "hybrids" are staying with me for life. They would have stayed even if they weren't hybrids.

I definitely think they may be fertile. Time will tell and a few attempts at a few eggs to confirm. I'll post here whatever the outcome.

[Corycory]

Well guys, I haven't been able to do a controlled experiment because I had some tank disasters. But accidentally I answered the question about viable offspring from my hybrid corys.

The tank disasters led me to moving some of the hybrid offspring and some albino corys into a smaller tank a few months back, co-existing with some otocinclus, khuli loaches and a bunch of shrimp. Today I noticed that they must have bred as I have baby corys that look around 2-3 weeks old, searching happily for food around. They all have the colouring the hybrids had at that age, meaning they are not pure albino and one of their parents must be a hybrid if not both. To me that looks like the hybrids can reproduce successfully with other hybrids or the albino corys. It will be interesting to see what exactly colour they are when they grow up fully.

But guys, that means that a cory that is a cross between a laser and an albino cory, crossed with a sibling or another pure albino, produces a viable lively offspring that looks like the hybrid corys so far. I'll take some pictures of the new baby corys when I can.

[Corycory]

So here are the pics They are not great but you can see them roughly. I am so proud because this time the babies survived themselves. They must have been able to find leftovers from the food I fed which wasn't any small.

[Corycory]

By the way, I just double checked what corys I have in that tank as I really haven't paid attention whatsoever when I was moving corys. The tank is a small tank of 60 litres. There's only one female cory which is one of my hybrids and 4 male corys, two of which are hybrid, two albino. So any one of the 4 is the father but the mom is definitely a hybrid as there are no other females in there. I actually looked at her a few days ago thinking she looks like bursting with eggs because she's huge....I must take a picture of her. She is a really nice looking cory.

The adult hybrids themselves, i.e. one of the parents or both, for those that did not follow the whole story from 4 years back, are an offspring from a mother albino and a gold laser male.
This time the mom is a hybrid and the father is either a hybrid or an albino, but point is, laser/albino hybrids are fertile and produce offspring. I can't wait to see how the offspring of my hybrid corys will look like. Hopefully they'll make it. I'll just keep doing what I was doing.

They babies are very lively. They are all over the place searching for food even though I only saw 3 at the same time. I thought they are shrimp when I first looked but it caught my attention as they were brown One that I saw at another time was way smaller so maybe they are not from the same batch or at least not growing at the same rate which happens....because of lack of food...And I didn't know there were baby corys there until today....

Sorry, I am rambling but I find this so exciting

[Corycory]

Took a couple of pictures of mama cory. She must be 3.5 years old now.

[VelcroWY]

I did not read all of the posts and no doubt someone already told you that some species of corys will interbreed, some will not or at least not with certain other species. They seem to know the rules and we've only learned a few of the rules on interbreeding.

I share your excitement, that has lasted 4 years. You have a great passion for your fish and corydoras & their near relatives are my passion as well. Keep enjoying!!!

[Corycory]

Thanks velcroWY

[Corycory]

Hey, the cory fry are growing. One has already lost all it's spotted pattern and is showing green coloration. So far they look exactly like the hybrids did at that stage. I am interested to see, what the fry have inherited from a hybrid mother crossed with her own type or even other aeneus. Is it going to be the same looking cory, more washed out like green aeneus because of the double crossing, or inherited even deeper colours/more pronounced laser line from the genes of the hybrids.

I've been long trying to figure out the difference in looks between my hybrid corys and gold laser corys. And I've come to the conclusion that there are two main differences. The hybrid's "laser" line is very faint, almost impossible to see bar around the head but it does give that orange hue on top of the body. And the hybrids grew way larger. A female hybrid is double the size of a male gold laser cory literally, and about 1.5 times bigger than a female gold laser. The female cory on the picture above is not the biggest of the females I have. Yesterday I noticed I have some pretty large females in the other tank, perhaps a cm longer than this one and larger than my 6 year old albino aeneus.

Other than that, all other body coloration, the deep green colour, the green/yellow tail fins and the electric yellow belly are all the same as gold laser and unlike green aeneus who are very washed out colour in comparison. My corys also improved their colour as they aged. Their barbels are also extremely long. Aeneus corys even in their best shape don't get such long barbels and theirs are more pointy rather than folding around the head under the body as in the gold lasers or my hybrids.

The size difference could simply be because the gold lasers I've got were in very poor condition when they were sold to me but I remember the seller told me they do not grow as large as some other corys so I go by that. He could have been wrong.

I'll take some more pictures when and if the baby corys grow to a more adult size. Fingers crossed.

[Corycory]

Well, there are more younger fry appearing in the tank. The adults must be really in the mood winter time. If all fry grow up I am going to have to move out fish from there. It's just a 15g tank and it's overstocked as it is, running on two small internal filters, stuffed with plants to the brim, but there are about 4 ottos, 5 corydoras, 6 khuli loaches and cherry shrimp. I don't even know how the tank manages. But I normally do lots of big water changes so hopefully it will be ok. Everyone is really buzzing and active in there. I see the fry every day lining up for food with the adults!

[Corycory]

The little cory fry aren't growing as fast as when I used to raise cory fry before but I guess with one feeding a day, competing with a bunch of adult fish, it's the best they can do. TThey are lively though and I see them every day. There's 4 of them I think. They've gained some colour and look to me exactly as the hybrid parents did at that stage, turning green all over the body. It's early days yet though... They may be a diluted version if one parent is an albino as they'd have more green aeneus in the genes rather than gold laser so depending how those are transferred, I might get a slight variation.

I'll take a picture when I can.