MASSIVE Bronze/Albino Corydoras Spawn

[Shrimp Doggy Dogg]

I noticed some rambunctious behavior in my 40g around 11:45am yesterday morning and quickly realized it was my Corys spawning!

The first time I witnessed a spawning from these fish I was able to collect about 30 eggs if memory serves.  The second time I was only able to collect about 20.  To my amazement, the largest albino female continuously spawned from 11:45am (at least that's when I joined the show) all the way till 1:25pm!  I was able to collect well over 100 eggs and it seems like most are fertilized!

From what I could tell, many of the bronze males attempted to fertilize her eggs, but only one of them was able to keep her attention.  As you can hopefully see from the pictures, the aforementioned male would swim in front of the female, arch his body effectively blocking her path, and deposit his stuff.  Her once erratic swimming suddenly calmed as if hypnotized.

 

Almost immediately afterword, eggs would start to drop and she held them with her fins.

She began depositing the eggs on the leaf of a large Amazon Sword plant and immediately attempted to eat them so I shooed her away.  The leaves weren't looking so good so I just trimmed them with eggs attached and dropped them, leaf and all, into a breeder basket.

I ended up cutting off 4 sword leaves and she transitioned to spawning directly on the glass where I collected all of the eggs with my insurance services card.

 

There was one albino male who made several attempts to fertilize her eggs, and while I was rooting for him, he couldn't seem to get the technique quite right and she quickly  lost interest.

 

After all that work, the large albino female was noticeably exhausted and bumping into things so I decided to feed an o-nip tab.  I wish I had a comparison shot of her belly before to emphasize just how sunken in her eggs satchel became!

 

I will return when the fry have grown large enough to see in pictures.

I hope you all have the chance to experience this at least once.  There's really nothing quite like it.

For those of you who like to see parameters, here are a few:

Water: 40 gallons

Temperature: comfortable

Fish: yes

 

[jwcarlson]

Holy cow, she is a bus!

[JE47]

I agree with @jwcarlson that is one large corydora I can believe that she delivered that many eggs. There is something amazing when the corydora's form that T shaped pose.

[nabokovfan87]

On 12/13/2023 at 7:21 PM, Shrimp Doggy Dogg said:

Really impressive to see them eat off a tab like this.  Those fish love that tank.  🙂

Well done, congratulations.

[GoofyGarra]

On 12/13/2023 at 10:21 PM, Shrimp Doggy Dogg said:

I hope you all have the chance to experience this at least once.  There's really nothing quite like it.

i have had multiple large corydora spawning runs before. They are very fun to watch, though at the end the concaved bellies on the females always feel like something is wrong, fotunately its easily solveable with food.

[Shrimp Doggy Dogg]

First wigglers spotted about 3:45pm today, so about 52 hours I think?  

Too small for pics for now, but they look like the tiniest little football players with their yolksac helmets strapped on.  I'll be back in a few days with updates!

[reefhugger]

On 12/15/2023 at 12:33 AM, Shrimp Doggy Dogg said:

First wigglers spotted about 3:45pm today, so about 52 hours I think?  

I had no idea they "hatched" that fast.  This post is wonderful...thank you.  I'm looking forward to the next baby pictures.

[Shrimp Doggy Dogg]

On 12/15/2023 at 2:36 AM, reefhugger said:

I had no idea they "hatched" that fast.  This post is wonderful...thank you.  I'm looking forward to the next baby pictures.

My pleasure!  Now I just need to make sure I time the bbs hatchery correctly and we're off!

[JE47]

On 12/14/2023 at 9:33 PM, Shrimp Doggy Dogg said:

they look like the tiniest little football players with their yolksac helmets strapped on

Thank you for the smile this produced! 😄

[Shrimp Doggy Dogg]

I'm starting to worry that my shrimp were able to reach through the mesh of the breeder basket and reach most of the eggs.

I'm pretty sure that every egg I left on the trimmed leaves turned to fungus.  I probably could have seen that coming.

There may only be a half dozen babies that make it past egg-status from this spawn.  It's probably for the best since I don't have the space for 100 more corys.  Just things to consider if I do have the space in the future.

I could be wrong, though!  Wigglers are very difficult to count.

[Shrimptanks]

IME I haven't seen predation on any of my corydoras eggs from neocaridina, they do clean the eggs and eat infertile/fungus eggs.  They haven't touched my smallest cory eggs either (hastatus, habrosus).  This has confirmed what I've read from some corydoras breeders who keep shrimp with their corydoras.  But you never know, in the immortal words of Jeff Goldblum

I have seen amanos eat corydoras eggs though.  Though big suckers actually follow my spawning pygmy corydoras species and consume their eggs right after they're laid.

[smm333]

Thanks for sharing this! I have albino cories who aren't old enough to breed yet. I am hoping to get a spawn one day though. They are so cute! 

[jwcarlson]

On 12/20/2023 at 1:58 AM, Shrimptanks said:

IME I haven't seen predation on any of my corydoras eggs from neocaridina, they do clean the eggs and eat infertile/fungus eggs.  They haven't touched my smallest cory eggs either (hastatus, habrosus).  This has confirmed what I've read from some corydoras breeders who keep shrimp with their corydoras.  But you never know, in the immortal words of Jeff Goldblum

I have seen amanos eat corydoras eggs though.  Though big suckers actually follow my spawning pygmy corydoras species and consume their eggs right after they're laid.

I've heard a few people mention this (keeping neo shrimp with fish eggs to keep them clean).  I think I might try it on a small batch, but I'm not really having any issues using methylene blue.  In general, I'd rather not use it, though.