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Hi All,

I have a community tank with several cory spp.: bronze , , , , and a lone female . I've never caught my ambiacus showing even the slightest courtship interest or behavior. My C141 spawned once before in a species-only tank, but none of their eggs developed. But my trils and my aeneus spawn all the time.

In the last three weeks, the bronze aeneus and the trils have been going crazy spawning. My aeneus spawn on glass, and my trils use the spawning mops; I've never witnessed any interspecies mating "interest" between these too, and I don't worry about it much since I keep multiple individuals of each species in the tank (3-4 bronze, about 5 trilinetus), so they always seem to court their own species.

During these last two weeks of what I thought were only bronze cory spawns and tril spawns, I've been using their eggs to confirm the idea that ramshorn snails could reduce the rate of egg fungusing without using chemicals (Live tips to save cory eggs).

Well, I had at least two additional clutches of eggs deposited during this time - one 10 days ago on the glass (a huge mass, probably over 200 eggs in one long pile) and the other about 50 eggs scattered in a spawning mop. Since my aeneus usually spawn on glass, and my trils usually use the spawning mops, I assumed the two egg clutches were respectively aeneus and tril. And since I was finished testing the snail hypothesis (and as a result, I've added a pile of ramshorn snails to my regular hatching tank), I didn't need to run any tests using these eggs... so I just dropped these two clutches of eggs into my standard hatching tank with all the aeneus fry and tril fry from the other recent clutches.

So what's the point of this long story? Well, I'm looking at my fry tonight, I can see what I recognize as ordinary tril fry (pigmented but pale and sort of silvery), and some darker ones (with a hint of yellow/brown to their body) that I recognize as aeneus fry, and then I see a number of these (see photo)!

What the heck are they? I don't recall either my bronze fry or my tril fry having such a strong black leading edge on the dorsal fin. Have I just forgotten what 1-2 week old aeneus and tril fry look like? Or could these be baby ambiacus? Does anybody know what ambiacus fry should look like?

I've run some google image searches for aeneus fry, trilineatus fry, and ambiacus fry, but I haven't found any clear pictures that show this feature in the aeneus or trils. Even in the BLOGs, the photos of aeneus fry and tril fry are too small to tell, or they don't have the band on the dorsal edge. I've also checked the spawning logs of aeneus and trilineatus at CorydorasWorld; the tril fry drawings don't resemble this; the aeneus fry do have a slight hint of pigmentation on the dorsal fin spine, but the drawings don't indicate that the color would be so bold as seen here.

Maybe my memory is fading about what bronze aeneus fry look like; I just don't recall them having the strong dark dorsal edge. Can anyone confirm? @kamas88? @coryman?

Thanks, Eric

Thanks for your help, Eric

Can't help much with the ID or much or with what I can say as you are very likely to know this, but what I've read is when groups of cories go on a spawning frenzy as your Trils and Aeneus have been, other cories in the tank possibly will also. The fry in the picture does look like it could be a miniature version of the Ambiacus. Hopefully a cory expert can confirm it.

This fish is 10mm SL, about 2 weeks old. The black dorsal spine still nice and distinct:

It certainly doesn't look like bronze cory fry.
Nice pictures by the way.

Thanks

Approaching 3 weeks old. 15 mm SL. Although not obvious, even the fish on left (in the second photo) has a black dorsal spine. The lone fish in the first photo is the same as the fish on the right in the second photo.

Admins will have a nice time clearing up the spammers...

The black dorsal spine would point strongly to ambiacus, congrats Eric

Do you always remove the eggs from your community tank? Any youngsters coming up in the community tank as well? Would all the eggs get eaten by the corys if you won't remove them?

Here's the latest picture of the same juvie beside a real bronze (aeneus) cat about one week younger. The ambiacus won't sit still for measurements, but the smaller aeneus is appropriately 13-14mm SL.

P.S., the fact that this juvie startles so easily compared to the bronze Cory fry tells me this is in fact ambiacus. My ambiacus adults, along with my adult C141, are the most skittish easily-scared corys I have ever seen!

If you want to turn this photo into a video, just yell, "Boo!" at your computer screen. I'm sure the ambiacus in the photo will jump if you do. LOL

Jobro wrote:The black dorsal spine would point strongly to ambiacus, congrats Eric

Do you always remove the eggs from your community tank? Any youngsters coming up in the community tank as well? Would all the eggs get eaten by the corys if you won't remove them?

Thanks Johannes. Sorry I didn't see your post sooner, it was probably lost in the spam. Kudos to the admins for having a keen eye and not accidentally deleting your post in their frazzled efforts to keep up with the spammers.

Yes, if I want to save Cory eggs in the community tank, I have to pull them out ASAP. I have several different Cory species in there, plus until recently a 4.5" upside down cat (sold this last weekend), and all my banjos. Eggs don't last long if I don't remove them within an hour of laying.

Cheers, Eric

Oh wow, how do you manage to get them out in time? I mean, they could spawn any day any time, right?

Okay, literally, the eggs might survive more than an hour - I don't know. But I do know if I see them in the morning before work, and leave them there, they are gone when I get home.

Often I know to get eggs because I see the adults egg laying. And I grab the eggs a few minutes later. These particular eggs I went searching for in the fibers of my spawning mops and Java moss, as I knew the adults had been spawning earlier in the day.

I think that eggs scattered in the mops and moss survive longer than large plaques of eggs plastered against the glass - the latter are easy pickings for hungry fish, all concentrated in one place. In the mops and moss, it's one egg here, another there, etc. They are very spread out and hard to find.

That said, such eggs are not guaranteed survival. I have never had a single egg survive and produce a young fish in this tank, in the four years the tank has been running.

Yes, they do spawn at all hours of the day. I know that I have lost lots of eggs over the years.

bekateen wrote:Okay, literally, the eggs might survive more than an hour - I don't know. But I do know if I see them in the morning before work, and leave them there, they are gone when I get home.

Often I know to get eggs because I see the adults egg laying. And I grab the eggs a few minutes later. These particular eggs I went searching for in the fibers of my spawning mops and Java moss, as I knew the adults had been spawning earlier in the day.

I think that eggs scattered in the mops and moss survive longer than large plaques of eggs plastered against the glass - the latter are easy pickings for hungry fish, all concentrated in one place. In the mops and moss, it's one egg here, another there, etc. They are very spread out and hard to find.

That said, such eggs are not guaranteed survival. I have never had a single egg survive and produce a young fish in this tank, in the four years the tank has been running.

Yes, they do spawn at all hours of the day. I know that I have lost lots of eggs over the years.

Ok, thank you. Was wondering how this could be done in a cory community tank without losing many eggs and didn't really come up with a solution. Good to know I'm not the only one.
Special tanks and stimulation for controlled spawnings seem to be the only way to get high numbers of eggs?

Not for aeneus. I've gotten spawns of over 200 eggs (it looked like more, but I didn't count) in the community tank.

Bad news - I'm starting to think that these aren't ambiacus at all, but rather juvies.

I hadn't considered this option previously because I currently own only one female barbatus. Before that, I had two barbatus in the tank, one male and one female (siblings, so I didn't want them inbreeding). To avoid inbreeding, on 6 Feb, I gave my male to another person in my fish club who owns a lone female, with the agreement that they can keep my male but they'll give me back some juvies if they spawn. And to my knowldege, these two siblings had never spawned before.

Around that same time, I'm seeing my aeneus and trilineatus spawning. Days later (after the male barbatus is gone) when I have eggs hatching, I get these odd fry. Since I no longer had a pair of barbatus, I excluded them as possible parents. Now that the juvies are a month old, they look just like my barbatus juvies from my spawns last year (I compared these new photos to old photos in my barbatus BLOG).

Anyway, I'm still on a waiting game, but sadly I think it was a false alarm for the ambiacus. If there are no ambiacus fry in my hatching tank now, I'll need to delete that BLOG report - I may have "jumped the gun" on this.

Cheers anyway, Eric

Not like having raised some scleromystax barbatus fry would be anything to be sad about I guess

No, you're right. I'm sad though because (1) I've had these ambiacus a while, and they are remarkably unwilling to spawn, and (2) these barbatus fry, if that's what they are, would be inbred F2s... no, actually F3s because I bought my original stock as juvies (F1s) from @rmc and these new juvies would be the grandchildren of those fish.

But you're right - there's nothing wrong with barbatus, they are one of the most beautiful callichthyids, in my opinion.

And until the color pattern matures, I suppose the mystery won't be definitively resolved...

The story continues.

Jumping the gun is nothing to get concerned about, we all do it, geting over exited when we've discovered eggs, fry, fanning in the case of loricariiridae. I've done it several times because as things develop- found it to be false alarms particularly in the case of the latter.

bekateen wrote:Bad news - I'm starting to think that these aren't ambiacus at all, but rather

Scleromystax barbatus

juvies.
......
Anyway, I'm still on a waiting game, but sadly I think it was a false alarm for the ambiacus. If there are no ambiacus fry in my hatching tank now, I'll need to delete that BLOG report - I may have "jumped the gun" on this.
Cheers anyway, Eric

Instead of deleting, maybe just make an alteration of the title. Your blog is still very well documented with nice pictures, if it's just a matter of relabelling...
Congrats for your frys, whoever the parents are!
By the way if you have to many of juvies send them accross the northestern border, there are many here, looking after this species.!!
Cheers,
francois