I bought 4 of these guys to clear up my algae, they're doing a pretty good job.

If they eat it all does anyone know what sort of food i should give em?

If you have anything else in ther with them, you don't have to feed them specifically.... they are scavengers and will "find" enough to survive

corys dont normally feed on algae

you can buy catfish pellets for them

i feed my corys on catfish sinking tablets by sera. they love them. i dont thin they could 'find' enough waste to live on, mine wont touch wasted/spoiled food and certain they dont touch the algae i had to buy a pleco for that, even then he gets fed plec food in addition to the algae as there wouldnt be enough in the tank for him to survive on

You do have to feed them specially. Unless you're badly overfeeding, flake and so forth won't get to the bottom of the tank in large amounts.

Mine go for algae tablets, but won't touch real algae. Shrimp pellets and hikari micropellets (hold them under the water and release them or they'll float and get snapped up too quickly) are also favorites.

Well at feeding time they seem to come up for food plus i have noticed some food making it to the bottom.

I also have alot of plants that catch the food and ive seen em hunting around in them

And yeah my corys really do seem to like the algae i have atm

Yes, plecs and otos will eat algae as a much larger percentage of their diet than corries will but I believe corries will indeed include some algae if its there.

Great suggestion from splishkey about the Sera sinking catfish tablets.

~~waterdrop~~

also corys eat best at night time (when the light is off).

I've got my mum to feed hers once at night.

yeah while they may graze on the algae a bit, you really do need to put some food in specifically for them, they are not vegetarian fish and do need some other nutrients in their diet other than what they find from algae, so get some small sinking catfish pellets for them.

My Bronze Corys like the Catfish Pellets from King British.

Haven't heard of them eating algae before... most interesting. What type of Corys are they?

Hey, certainly not trying to hijack the feeding topic but while we're on the subject of corries I'd like to ask you all a question... What opinions have you about the best dwarf corries? Which two (or more species?) are the dwarf sized ones? (I'm forgetting even though it was just in another recent thread)

Oliver, my son, and I were thinking of maybe 3, 4, 5 or so little corries in our 28G and I keep hearing here about how playful and happy certain species of corries can get if they are in a large enough group, so I'm hoping we could figure out how to acheive that. What is the trade-off, if any, between good playful personality vs. perhaps more striking colors or patterns. I'd be willing to give up more striking pattens if it meant more personality in the corries.

Any opinions??

~~waterdrop~~

Pygmy Cory

Smallest cories your going to get so you could get quite a lot, with a lot of personality in my opinion!

you have c pygmaeus, c habrosus and c hastatus which are the true pygmy cories, then there are the smaller normal sized cories like pandas.

one of them is a mid water swimmer (think hasty's but may be the habrosus) which makes a change, the other two act just like normal cories but a bit smaller.

really the choice you have is bottom/mid water swimmers, then once you've decided pick the one you like the look of!

wow, great, been looking them up -- you're right, its the hasty's they say are mid-swimmers, so that's out for us probably and puts it between the other two. The habros look nice with their irregular dark splotches but the pygmaeus look nice too, almost with leopard spots in some pictures.

So does the "playful" description for say 5x or more apply equally to all corries or any particular ones? Maybe I'm restricting it too much just thinking of the dwarf varieties?

I looked at my LFS and they have various "sinking pellots" for catfish.

~~waterdrop~~

yup, all cories will be pretty playful in a decent sized group. the bigger the group the more active they will be, the pygmys are a good choice because they're smaller so you can have a larger group of them than you would the larger cories, and as such they feel mroe secure and are more active. They're generally a touch more delicate than the larger cories but no serious issues.

One thing cories really do seem to enjoy is an airstone, they like to play in the bubbles which is very cute. Not a necessity for them by any means, but something to think about.

Personally I like the hastys and the habrosus more than the pgymaeus, but it's just personal choice. We're hopefully getting a massive group of panda's for our 60gal soon

Since we seem to be discussing Cory's here, i'll post my Cory question here instead of creating a new thread:

I currently have 2 25 gallon tanks up and running, in one tank I have 5 bronze corys and 2 peppered corys, and in the other I have 5 peppered corys. I'm aware that corys like to have 5+ of themselves around to shoal, but i've noticed the bronze corys tend to shoal together, and the 2 peppered ones are usually off in another part of the tank together. Is this normal behavior for Cory's? Or do Cory's of all types usually tend to shoal together?

What i'm thinking of doing is getting 2 more bronze Corys, adding them to the tank with the 5 Bronze and 2 Peppers, then moving the 2 peppered Cory's over to the other tank with the other 5 peppered Cory's.

Yay or Nay?

Different species sometimes shoal together, but not always. I'd go ahead and move the peppered corys together like you were thinking.

I'll get to that in the next few hours, thanks.

The peppered ones in the tank with the bronze ones are also exceptionally smaller then the bronze ones and thus tend to get pushed out of the way when it comes feeding time by the bigger bronze Corys, but they're nearly the same size as all the peppered ones in the other tank, so I think that will be a bonus as well.