Cories for my 20g? Updated 6/26/08 PICTURES! (!56k)

[Karackle]

Well, my 20g is stabilized now (WOOHOO!) Aside from the very sad loss of one of my female bettas, everyone, including the newly added Otos, is doing extremely well, and the plants look great! The crypt spiralis is alway pearling like mad when I come home from work!

Anyways, now that we're stabilized I was thinking of adding a few more fish to round out the tank. I was originally just going to add back the 2 glowlights i lost when the pH was very low, and perhaps another couple of neons and glowlights, however, the 7 neons and 5 glowlights regularly school together, so I'm thinking of putting something else in there instead. I fell in love with the adorable pygmy cories I put in my 5g that sadly did not make it. Would these be a good option for the tank? Is there a larger cory (easier to find ) that I should look at instead? Or do we think I am too heavily stocked to add a small shoal of any sized cory?

Tank is 20g high, penguin biowheel filter, for stocking see my signature, an d for more tank specifics, click the link

As ever, thanks in advance for the helpful advice I know i'll get!

[JustOneMore21]

I would choose something that stays smallish (like 2" and under), but it doesn't have to be Dwarf Cories. Bandit Cories (Corydoras metae), False Julii Cories (Corydoras trilineatus), Habrosus (dwarves, but the bigger species), Panda Cories and Skunk Cories (Corydoras arcuatus) all stay at 2" or less. Habrosus are the smaller ones at 1" or a tad over. Panda Cories and False Juliis are probably the most common, but you may be able to find the others.


I think you'd be fine with 5-6 of one of those species, but I wouldn't add anything after that.

[Bugman]

Panda corys are great. My favorite right now are peppered corys. They can get to about 2.5 inches. I currently have 3 panda and 3 peppered in my 20.

[plakat]

I love the Habrosus corys. They stay small enough to keep in my smaller tanks and i have a nice size shoal in my 55g.

[Karackle]

Ooh the habrosas cories are really pretty! If I can find them, I think I'll go with those since they're a bit smaller, otherwise probably the pandas, also very cute and not huge. Don't want to be TOO overloaded on the bioload! The pygmy cories (corydoras pygmaeus) are really cute, but they're SO tiny i'm a little worried they'll get picked on, and that I'll never be able to find them! hahaha

[plakat]

Yeah I was worried the pygmy would be too small also. My full grown Habrosus are about an inch and really fat like this guy.

[Karackle]

Hahaha excellent! I love the little chubber! Heeheehee If I can find some Habrosus I think those are the ones i'll have to get, and then yes, i will be done adding fish If not I'm thinking Pandas or Hastatus....any thoughts which would be better? would i not be able to add enough (5-6) pandas to make them happy the way Cories like to be in schools? Thanks!

[fishbguy1]

I'm picking up 10 habrosus for my 29 on tuesday.

If you can't get habrosus, get hastatus, as they are also dwarfs.

www.aquabid.com often has habrosus, pygmaeus, as well as hastatus.

www.anchorbayaquarium.com currently has alot of habrosus in stock. That's where I'm getting mine from. I think they ship, but I'm not 100% positive, as I only live ahalf hour away, so I pick up all my fish from there.

[plakat]

I think the hastatus would be better since you can house a good number of them but I haven't kept either of them.

[Karackle]

I'm not sure if I can locally get hastatus, or even habrosus, but i do know I can get pygmaeus, I suppose I could always order them, but for some reason i prefer to get them where I can see them first :-P

I'll have a look around

[Karackle]

And they gave me extra! I asked for 6 but said if that only left 1 or 2 I'd take them, we thought there was only 2 left, ended up being 4. So I came home with 10 Corydoras pygmaeus but only charged for 8. I thought that was a pretty good deal! I have enough to try a few in my 5g again if I want to. I'm a little worried about overloading the bioload in there though.

Anyway, they're currently drip-acclimating to the 20g. I think i'll QT them using some water from the 20g, I can't decide if I should just stick them straight into the 20g though. They're from the same batch that I got cories from a few weeks ago, so I imagine they're the heartiest, disease free ones, but that doesn't rule out bringing disease IN to the tank and other fish. So I suppose I just answered my own question :-P I'll see how many survive QT (hopefully all!) before deciding whether to try some in my 5g again. It'll probably depend a lot on whether that tank is still stable, and how much the plants have grown in!

Pics of the new additions to come...

[Karackle]

Here are some pics of the little guys in their QT home. They all look really happy and healthy so I probably won't leave them in there for too too long, but better safe than sorry since i've been too lucky thus far with not getting disease outbreaks by not QTing fish.

Any here are the new additions:

Schooling together:




Resting together: (i'm not sure what setting I had the camera on that this came out so orange, but i thought it was a cool pic anyway)

[kutothe]

haha, I love that fat little guy on the moss

[Karackle]

Hahaha yeah, he's awesome. Not one of mine, but hopefully they'll be fat and happy like him soon enough!

[lauraleellbp]

Awesome! I love the dwarf cories

I REALLY recommend 2 weeks QT though... it can even take longer than that for some issues to raise their ugly heads, but 2 weeks is good enough to rule out most of the more common stuff.