Welcome to planet catfish. I think with few exceptions, your experience is pretty much similar to everyone elses. It may not be corydoras, but certainly almost everyone would have started with a community tank with the odd catfish added for good measure, and then realized that catfish is a nice variety to keep. Certainly that's how I got into it...
Three years ago, my now wife bought two goldfish. One survived the initial cycling of the rather small tank. After several weeks and one housemove, we bought a small "pleco", which turned out to be a female Bristlenose. To which I added a male about a year and a bit ago, and since then we've had about 150 babies... Most of which I've actually sold to the LFS, and they keep running out of them...
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Mats
