Anyone keep cories with adult eartheaters?

[DaveB]

It has been years and years since I kept cory cats. I remember them from back when I was just a kid doing water changes with a bucket.

Are they egg predators? Would they be a threat to eartheaters spawning and digging pits? Or are they small enough that they know better than to go battle a 6" fish?

 

[japes]

Yes, the issues lie with the Corydoras though, not the Eartheaters. I've never found Corydoras to be egg raiders, they even leave my Apistogramma spawns completely alone.

Unless we're talking large Corydoras, like 4-5cm+ species, I recommend introducing them with juvenile Eartheaters so they can learn the eatting habits and how to properly scavenge with, well, other scavengers. Corydoras introduced with adult Eartheaters can have trouble getting food without overfeeding.

This was my experience, wasn't ever fatal, but thats how it panned out for me. Just keep an eye on things.

 

[DaveB]

Interesting. I wouldn't have guessed that.

I think I've got enough surface area for the geos to share now that I've thinned the stock. I haven't kept cories in forever (due to them being arowana food sized, as unlikely as that is) so I kind of want to grab some Sterbai.

 

[Conner]

I haven't kept cory's with adult eartheaters other than a single brasiliensis pair that never produced eggs. they didn't seem to have any interaction whatsoever that I could see.

However, when I had german and bolivian rams breeding in tanks with cory's, I did notice the rams were having to furiously chase the cory's away from the egg sites. The eggs tended to disappear pretty quickly overnight as well with cory's in the tank vs. no cory's in the tank.

I don't know if larger species of eartheaters would be better able to defend against the cory's or not.

 

[Conner]

I think the smaller species of cory's would be less likely to cause issues than the larger ones, though.