Caring for Corydoras
Food, Feeding, Water change & Filter cleaning
Food & Feeding
There are an enormous amount of different foods you can use for your Corydoras. The best is of course to give them live food (i.e. blood worms; unless you are allergic like me, mosquito larvae, newly hatched brine shrimp, and micro and grindal worms).
The second best is frozen food such as adult brine shrimp, cyclops, and mosquito larvae.
Most people though use commercial prepared food such as flakes and pellets. These have come along way over the last couple of years.
You can also make your own food such as beefheart and shrimp mix. I will expand on that at a later time.
Download this book that has a lot of good written about food and feeding fish.
Water change
Boring but necessary!
Clear water is not the same as good fish water. The eaten (and uneaten) food you put in the tank is converted to different "poisons" in the tank. To keep the levels down you need to change water regularly. Some of the more sensitive species might need half the volume to be changed several times a week, while others only need 10% every week.
Filter cleaning
Do like this to keep the good bacteria culture in the filter media when you clean it:
- Fill two buckets about half ways with water FROM THE TANK. (NEVER use tap water since the chlorine/chloramine might kill off parts of the bacteria.)
- Take out the sponge/filter media and squeeze it repeatedly in one bucket.
- Move it to the other bucket and squeeze repeatedly again
- Put it back into the tank/filter canister.
- Fill up the tank.
No matter how large your filter is or what type of filter you use you NEED to change water!
Diseases
If kept in an aquarium where you regularly change the water, have good filtration, and feed them well, most Corydoras are pretty hardy.
Will add more info later.
Here is link to an article by Rhonda Murphy & Gregory A. Lewbart from North Carolina State University, College of Veterinary Medicine, Raleigh, NC
"Salt Tolerance in the Callichthyid Catfish (Corydoras aeneus)"