Corydoras
gossei is fairly new to the hobby, being described by Nijssen
in 1972. They come from a creek near Guajara Mirim, in Rondonia,
Brazil. They reach over two inches in length. Both male and female
are darkly colored in the top half of the body and head, with yellow/white
in the lower half. They have orange/yellow markings, and the front
spine of the dorsal and pectoral fins are the same orange/yellow.
The rest of the fins are mostly clear, with wavy vertical stripes
on the tail.
Since we have always enjoyed the different types of corys, we try
to pick up new ones when we can! And from where else better to get
corys than Eric Bodrock of Pennsylvania. Eric's been breeding a
lot of different corys for quite a while now, and has been very
successful with them, as the local auctions prove when he brings
them in! Eric has been a friend of ours for more years than he wants
us to admit to, and as friends that keep fish usually do, we don't
hesitate to share any fish we have. That's where we got our Corydoras
gossei fry last year. We have a group of seven: 5 males and
2 females, in a ten-gallon bare tank with a sponge filter, and after
only about 9 months they have spawned for us!
Most corys spawn on a flat surface or in a spawning mop, and since
we did not know for sure how the gossei spawned, we provided
both. To our surprise they used both: there were eggs on the glass,
the mop and on the filter. We also had some plastic plants in the
tank and found eggs on these also! We set up a 2-1/2 gallon tank
with a sponge filter to put the eggs in, and using a razor blade
we scraped some of the eggs off the glass, and picked some out of
the mop, and put them in the tank. We added an airstone close to
the eggs for better aeration, then we covered the tank to keep light
out. Most of the eggs were infertile and fungused over the next
couple of days. We removed those as soon as we saw them, using a
1/8" air line tubing and a short piece of 1/8" rigid tubing
for a siphon tube. This is not unusual--in most of the fish the
female seems to develop before the males and the male can't fertilize
all of the eggs at first.
It took about seven days for the fry to hatch out, and we started
by feeding infusoria squeezed from a seasoned sponge, and then micro
worms, small fry food, then finally fresh-hatched baby brine shrimp.
We ended up with a few fry that made it and are growing very well.
Hopefully next time we will have more fry.
We would like to add that Eric feeds a lot of worms to his breeders,
which really helps to get the breeders in shape and ready to spawn.
We don't keep the worms, but we found that when we fed earthworm
flakes very heavily and made 2-3 water changes a week, that was
when the gossei spawned. We did get to watch the spawning and they
acted just like others we have seen. The males get agitated around
the female and when the female has a clutch of eggs in her pelvic
fins, she mouths the males' anal vents, then looks for a place to
lay the eggs. This goes on for quite a while.
Hopefully some of this information can help you with any corys you
may want to work with!
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