PlanetCatfish.com

hi all i intend to turn over my tank in the new year to smaller fish and whould like to keep a group of corys but my tank is 36inch deep and i have read that thay dont do well in tanks of this depth is this true also what typ of corry whould you recomend? for a cory newbi. and what size groups do thay live in .in the wild
cheers all .ricky

I believe this is fine. They tend to live in varying depth of water in nature, and we've had discussions about this in the past, and the conclusion is that anything that can possibly be classified as a home aquariums should be fine - 36" is quite a deep tank, but I'm pretty sure that as long as you avoid tiny corys, it will be fine. There are lots of different corys, and to recommend one over all the others is probably unfair to the others - and not entirely unlike suggesting that you should have flowery curtains because I like that. Look at what the conditions are in the tank, find something that you think looks nice and that matches the conditions of the tank you have.

There is an advanced search function in the Cat-eLog menu, where you can enter as much or as little as you like about the fish you're looking for, and it will list the fish that matches that. For corys, you obviously want to put Callichthyidae in the Family field - whether you add Corydoras for genus or not is up to you - you'll get some of the similar ones, like Brochis and Schleromystax as well if you don't. Then add the temperature range (smaller range gives more matches, as it wants to find fish that cover the entire range, and many fish have a relatively small range that they like), and perhaps set the min-size to 50 or 60 mm to reduce the number you get.

In the wild, cories normally live in fairly large groups, many dozens to thousands. The general concensus is that they do well in tanks if the group is 6 or more. The more the better, really.

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Mats

wow lol thats great mats thanks for that il look in to it. i was thinking something hardy becuse im new to corys and was thinking of a group of 15-20 i once saw a great setup whith a large group grazing on food

If kept in a well established tank, most corys are fairly hardy. Obviously, if you keep them in the wrong conditions (e.g. too warm or too cool water). But it sounds like you have kept fish for some time, so shouldn't be a problem. The ones that are hard to keep are also fairly hard to find.

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Mats

once i find a typ of cory to keep the water conditions wont be to much of a problem i hope iv hade the same large fish mix tank for years now and will be tuning it over to smaller fish and plants .hopefuly a river typ set up. its all new to me plants and a one typ set up whith smaller fish so im ready for a few problems

Hi Ricky2, I had the most commonly available corys in my 36" deep tank. and . (They're common in my area)
They did terrific and the c. paleatus had lots of babies. I had it heavily planted and now have the same ones in another tank but not for any particular reason. The depth didn't seem to bother them at all. I had soft sand for them to snuffle through - not the sharp stuff! and they did fine. The only corys I had issues with were the little panda corys (). Don't know if it was the depth or stock but they didn't thrive.

Whichever kind you choose, they're quite nice in big groups - not really picky about anything and quite active.