Corys can be amazingly resiliant.
Last spring I had a 20g backwall blow out and spent the wee hours of the night rescuing fish/plants and getting them transferred into temp holding. Polished gravel substrate heavily planted quickly turns into a couple inches of pure mud. Pulled as many corys and ottos out as I could find, often burying them in gravel piles as I tried to corral 'em. Finally called it a night, leaving the "empty" tank with 2-4" piles of gravel and maybe 1/4" standing water between the piles.
The next morning I started shovelling the gravel out onto a screen to finish rinsing it--and turned up a cory! Plopped her immediately into my emergency tank and after a few hours sulk in the weeds she was back to swimming with the herd.
|