Confusion Help With Breeds

[BaylorPerez]

i am confused on some breeds of fish.
 
As i am told by my LFS that all Corie catfish will take all the same water parameters. Will take any food, and will tank any species difference( Put albinos with pandas, pandas with julies and so on ). as i havent seen any actually work but i am assuming they are right.
 
With danios, i have seen them school with others of the same danio species, but i havent seen them school with other of different types of the same species. ( havent seen neons school with pearl danios successfully as i have tried them. BlackSkirts with Spotted danios and so on ). Can someone help me clarify why this may not work ( also are blackskirts tetras and not danios as my LFS offered them as Danios and not as the more common Tetra )
 
And with the Water Hardiness i dont exactly think my tests are accurate. Would you recommend some tests to help me find a more accurate Set.

 

[DoubleDutch]

Think they'd better close that LFS. That is really rubbish advice.

Corys do have different needs and the one is hardier than the other, they need to be in a group of their own species for several reason and need their own (mainly protein / carnivorious food).

That also count for danios and tetras btw.

Visit another / better LFS !

 

[BaylorPerez]

even with some people on here, they say that Corydoras catfish will group even if they are not the same type ( I.e albino with pandas )

 

[Byron]

I think there are two different issues behind this discussion, so perhaps I can clarify.
 
First, freshwater fish species that we term shoaling [some use the term schooling which technically is a bit different, more applicable to marine fish, but that doesn't really matter for this discussion] live in groups.  Depending upon the species, the group can be a dozen or two, or hundreds, even thousands, in the habitat.  Shoaling fish must have several of that species in the aquarium.  Minimum numbers are not always easy to pin down, because in most cases the more fish of the species there are, the better (= more natural behaviours, "happier" and healthier) the fish will be.  But tank size obviously enters into this, so the hobby has come up with minimum numbers that are generally workable.
 
So you need several of a species when it is a shoaling fish.  For most tetras, danios, rasbora and barbs, six is the number usually given as absolute minimum.  There are some exceptions, species that must have more than this, but we needn't go there now.  With corys, the minimum is five (I don't know why, but several leading corydoradinae authorities use this number).  But there is certainly no doubt that the more there are, the better.
 
That's the first point.  The second is compatibility of species.  Combining one species of danio with another species may work, or it may not, depending upon the species.  Same with tetras, barbs and rasbora.  But regardless, there must be several fish of each species so the fish can interact normally within the species; having two "x" danios, three "y" danios, and one "z" danio, is not the same and will not satisfy the fishes' requirements for several of their own species.  Whether or not a species will get along with another species is another matter, but without several fish of a species this is not usually going to work.
 
Coming back to corys.  All species presently described in the genus Corydoras will get along with all other species.  You can mix any number of species with no issues.  [Note, I am only considering numbers here, with no discussion on water parameters that may differ.]  However, having at least five or six of each species is still preferable.  However, at this point, I will suggest that with a larger number overall, there does seem to be less need for more of each species.  I have close to 50 corys in my 70g, representing 12 species.  For various reasons, I have differing numbers of each species, and a few have only two or even one.  Sometimes this was all the store had, and one may wait years to find that species again.  I have been maintaining corys for over 20 years, and to my knowledge they seem fine so long as there is a large number.  Even within the species for which I might have six, seven or ten, I see individuals chumming around with fish of another species regularly.  So my advice here is to try and get at least five of a species, and mixing the species will not cause any problem.
 
Except--they may cross-breed.  We had a thread on this very recently.  Provided you keep the fry (if any survive) and do not release them into the hobby, there is no problem.  But hybrid fish should never be released into the hobby as this pollutes the gene pool.  I don't want to go through all this again, so suffice it to say that keeping any surviving fry from tanks where you have two or more species of cory will solve this issue.
 
Byron.

 

[DoubleDutch]

Still verrrrry poor / bad advice from this LFS @byron.

I agree for the biggest part of your post. Still think a Corycollection as suggested by the LFS instead of a group / shoal of the samespecies is a bad advice. Offcourse different species will live together (simply cause they are friendly) but the social behaviour in a big herd is great. My Peppers show a conpletely different behaviour than my Venezuelans for instance. Several species don't group/shoal together. Tonthe OP : about food : they're mainly carnivorious.
They will eat almost everything but the nutritional value of vegs / algae is almost zero, zero.
I'd seriously visit another LFS.

 

[fluttermoth]

I would also add that you need to learn the difference between a 'species' and a 'breed'.
 
For example, the panda corydoras is of the species Corydoras panda (a nice easy scientific name for that one, lol ), whereas the bronze corydoras is C. aeneus.
 
Within the bronze corydoras species, there are different 'breeds', like normal and albino. Many fish have different coloured 'breeds'; like the green/albino/normal tiger barbs, but they're all still the same species.
 
You can mix 'colour morphs' of the same species without any worries about hybridising.

 

[DoubleDutch]

I would also add that you need to learn the difference between a 'species' and a 'breed'.
 
For example, the panda corydoras is of the species Corydoras panda (a nice easy scientific name for that one, lol ), whereas the bronze corydoras is C. aeneus.
 
Within the bronze corydoras species, there are different 'breeds', like normal and albino. Many fish have different coloured 'breeds'; like the green/albino/normal tiger barbs, but they're all still the same species.
 
You can mix 'colour morphs' of the same species without any worries about hybridising.

Agree. Only thing is especially C.aeneus shows some really different types. My C.aeneus "emerald" and C.aeneus "bronze" are different in color but also in shape and size !!! I keep them in divided thank cause of that.

My albinos are in with my bronze though !!

 

[Baccus]

Are you sure that the "emerald" cory is C. aeneus? The only Emerald Cory that I have ever heard of is Corydoras (or more correctly Brochis)  splendens which is a huge impressive cory and very different to the Bronze Cory C. aeneus. Brochis splendens and Corydoras aeneus should not be able to cross breed, so mixing them shouldn't be a problem.
Since the albino corys are most likely albino bronze they will breed with your normal bronze corys.
Nowdays there are albino Bronze, Peppered, Strebia (cant see the point to that one) and Panda (again cant see the point in an albino panda)

 

[Byron]

Are you sure that the "emerald" cory is C. aeneus? The only Emerald Cory that I have ever heard of is Corydoras (or more correctly Brochis)  splendens which is a huge impressive cory and very different to the Bronze Cory C. aeneus. Brochis splendens and Corydoras aeneus should not be able to cross breed, so mixing them shouldn't be a problem.
 

 
These two species have been confused by many, but taxonomically they are now both in Corydoras.  The genus Brochis has for the present been invalidated.  This citation from the profile of C. splendens on Seriously Fish, which I happened to have written, should explain things:
 
Brochis was first synonymised with Corydoras by Britto (2003), since the latter genus cannot be considered monophyletic if the former is accepted as valid. This decision has been supported in subsequent phylogenetic studies by Shimabukuro-Dias et al. (2004) and Alexandrou et al. (2011), although the name Brochis is still common in aquarium literature. It is likely that the genus will be revalidated and expanded in the future following a required taxonomic review of the subfamily Corydoradinae as suggested by Alexandrou and Taylor (2011).
 
Alexandrou and Taylor (2011) suggest nine lineages within the genus Corydoras.  A lineage means the species in this group or clade share the same last common ancestor; this means that the Corydoras genus is likely nine distinct genera, not one.  Lineage 8 of Alexandrou & Taylor (2011) includes the three "Brochis" species and 39 existing "Corydoras" species plus 43 as yet undescribed/named species.  When this classification is finalized, the name Brochis will be re-validated for the genus since Brochis was the first name assigned to any one of the species and thus takes precedence. [Alexandrou & Taylor point out, they are not proposing a new formal classification until a thorough peer-reviewed revision incorporating both morphological and genetic data has been published.]  C. aeneus is in Lineage 7 which means it descended from a different ancestor than the species in Lineage 9, so cross-breeding would be less likely.
 
The three "Brochis" species are certainly unique compared to the other species in this subfamily, the Corydoradinae [genera Aspidoras, Corydoras and Scleromystax as it stands at present].  C. splendens can be told apart from other ex-Brochis species by possession of 10-12 dorsal-fin rays (vs. 15-18, normally 15, in C. britskii and usually 17-18 in C. multiradiatus). All other members of the genusCorydoras, as well as the closely-related Aspidoras and Scleromystax, possess 6-8 dorsal-fin rays.
 
Byron.

 

[DoubleDutch]

Are you sure that the "emerald" cory is C. aeneus? The only Emerald Cory that I have ever heard of is Corydoras (or more correctly Brochis)  splendens which is a huge impressive cory and very different to the Bronze Cory C. aeneus. Brochis splendens and Corydoras aeneus should not be able to cross breed, so mixing them shouldn't be a problem.
Since the albino corys are most likely albino bronze they will breed with your normal bronze corys.
Nowdays there are albino Bronze, Peppered, Strebia (cant see the point to that one) and Panda (again cant see the point in an albino panda)

I know this, but there also is a type of C.aeneus that's labeled / sold as "emerald". That's the one I have 6 of and definitely are C.aeneus. But as said they are quite different to "Bronze".
There are more "types" of aeneus !

Don't rhink there is much wrong with albino cause it is a natural fenomenon though offcourse linebred.

I am keeping C.aeneus albino (6) and C.paleatus albino (10) and a C.paleatus xanthist (yellow / blue eyes).

Regards Aad