Some cory breeding questions

[tolstoy21]

For those of you who pull eggs and hatch them outside the breeding tank, do you use breeder boxes or egg tumblers? Do both work or is one a better method than the other?

Also, for those who trigger spawns in conjunctions with weather, how far in advance of a weather front do you perform a water change? Or do you perform the change as the system is upon you?

I know I can breed some cory species successfully to a degree by just letting them do their thing in a heavily planted tank, but I'm looking specifically for advice on the above for those who have been successful with this.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[EDIT]

Oh duh . . . . I just saw this thread a few beneath mine!  

 

 But, the question remains . . .  eggs in a breeder box or tumbler?

Edited September 9, 2023 by tolstoy21

[Ken Burke]

IMO weather is a “minor” trigger, so I don’t usually mess with it.  If I haven’t had a spawn in a while, a WC may fire ‘em up but feeding bloodworms or brine shrimp likely will triggers them regardless of weather.  But interested to see if you can figure something out.

 

I’ve only had (limited) success pulling eggs with angels, so no help there. 

[tolstoy21]

On 9/9/2023 at 10:54 AM, Ken Burke said:

IMO weather is a “minor” trigger, so I don’t usually mess with it.  If I haven’t had a spawn in a while, a WC may fire ‘em up but feeding bloodworms or brine shrimp likely will triggers them regardless of weather.  But interested to see if you can figure something out.

Thanks for the response.

I have a small group of sterbai I acquired recently that I've been working with. They have spawned two times for me already, but I haven't kept track of what I've done that triggers them, if anything. 

I've been pulling the eggs, but haven't had luck yet with hatching. I've been keeping them in a specimen container with a gently bubbling airstone and a drop of methylene blue, but like I said, no luck thus far.

I also have a ziss breeder box and ziss egg tumbler, so those are my next options to try. I'm also considering using alder cones instead of meth blue, as per the cory breeding talk on the aquarium coop club channel. 

[nabokovfan87]

On 9/9/2023 at 7:41 AM, tolstoy21 said:

 

 But, the question remains . . .  eggs in a breeder box or tumbler?

I would tumble them, it's a lot easier to control flow.

Once they hatch, then I move them to the breeder box or grow out tank.

On 9/9/2023 at 7:41 AM, tolstoy21 said:

Also, for those who trigger spawns in conjunctions with weather, how far in advance of a weather front do you perform a water change? Or do you perform the change as the system is upon you?

There isn't really a defined answer here.

If you know a storm is coming, prep them for about 2 weeks with heavy food. Pending the storm coming in a few days that's usually when the big water changes help. I like to do one the day before and the day after the storm.

[Guppysnail]

I do both let them do their thing and pull. Ziss tumbler hatches Cory eggs like nothing I’ve ever seen. I do my wc the day before, day of and day after all three produce the same results for me. (Just one or the other not all three in a row)
My biggest trigger is heavy feeding white and grindal worms a solid week ahead of a storm 2x a day. That’s an almost never fail for me. Just heavy feeding yeilds results about half as often as worms.  If you want room temp white worm cultures or grindal worm cultures let me know if you don’t already have them. 
 

I use 3 degree cooler water and mix extra distilled water in so the ingoing water is .2 -.4 liwer ph like I think it would be with rain. 🤷‍♀️

 

[tolstoy21]

On 9/9/2023 at 11:35 AM, Guppysnail said:

If you want room temp white worm cultures or grindal worm cultures let me know

That is a nice offer. I might have to take you up on that.

[tolstoy21]

Too funny, here I am asking questions on how to trigger these fish, meanwhile they are down in my basement spawning away and sticking eggs all over the mops!

[Ken Burke]

Candlelight and smooth jazz do work.  Who knew.

[TheSwissAquarist]

Idk if this applies to all corys, but Salt'n'pepper corydoras fertile rate goes up in colder water. 

(Feeding the fry is a pain in the butt; I'm on my 9th attempt after my previous batch died at the age of 2 weeks thanks to a bust heater)

[AllFishNoBrakes]

I let them do their thing, pull eggs, and hatch them in a tumbler. I’ve never intentionally done a water change, or cool water change in conjunction with a storefront, but I’ve definitely done my normal weekly maintenance that happened to have a storm on the same day and woke up to eggs the following day. Coincidence? Idk. I just let them do their thing and pull eggs if I want to hatch some. 

[Rube_Goldfish]

On 9/9/2023 at 11:01 AM, tolstoy21 said:

Thanks for the response.

I have a small group of sterbai I acquired recently that I've been working with. They have spawned two times for me already, but I haven't kept track of what I've done that triggers them, if anything. 

I've been pulling the eggs, but haven't had luck yet with hatching. I've been keeping them in a specimen container with a gently bubbling airstone and a drop of methylene blue, but like I said, no luck thus far.

I also have a ziss breeder box and ziss egg tumbler, so those are my next options to try. I'm also considering using alder cones instead of meth blue, as per the cory breeding talk on the aquarium coop club channel. 

I have a group of about 8 adult sterbai in a planted community tank that spawn kinda sorta regularly. That is, I'm sure there's a pattern, but I've never taken close enough notes on weather and feeding to figure it out. There seems to be some loose correlation to storms, but sometimes storms come and go with no spawning, and sometimes sunny days bring eggs.

They get live baby brine shrimp roughly every other day, frozen food (mostly but not exclusively bloodworms) when it fits my schedule (mostly weekends) and flake/pellets the rest of the time. I probably overfeed.

As to the eggs, I've never tried a tumbler, and while I've recently bought a Penn-Plax Deluxe Net Breeder, I haven't used it yet. What I've had success with is coffee filter baskets with an "inner tube" of airline tubing, floating in either the same tank as their parents or, more recently, a ten gallon growout. There, my biggest worry is bladder snails, which voraciously eat the eggs (hence the net breeder). Before the net breeder, I found a lid from a deli cup/wonton soup cup fit the coffee filter basket pretty well; it slows down the snails but doesn't completely stop them.

Anyway, I leave them in the coffee filter basket with a couple bits of floating stem and/or a clump of hair algae until they're big enough to not be vulnerable to any other juveniles in the grow out, then tip them in to raise up. Maybe an egg tumbler or a hang-on-the-tank breeder box would raise my yield, but I figure doing it this way means I'm getting the benefit of the larger water volume while still keeping the eggs away from snails and concentrating the hatched fry for feeding and safety reasons.

Oh, one other thing: though I have no first hand experience, I've heard of folks putting Neocaridina shrimp in whatever container they've got eggs in; they say the shrimp eat any fungus and/or fungus-infected eggs while cleaning or at least disregarding the healthy ones.

I almost forgot: our own @Lowells Fish Lab has a great video on breeding sterbai cories: