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Spawning Cory Sterbai


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I would like to share my experiences with you on spawning this beautiful but stubborn little catfish. I am sure that many have tried and failed, as I am one of those many times over. After using many cory spawning techniques to no avail I have found one that works amazingly and now they are one of my best spawners. Let us first go through a rundown of the corydoras sterbai for those who are not so familiar with this great looking catfish. My first spawn was based on luck, impatience and frustration, the following spawns are repeating those first steps with a little more calmness and patience.

Overview; Corydoras sterbai from the family of Callichthyidae and sub family Corydoradinae

Origin- Brazil in the upper Rio Guapore and Bolivia in the Rio Guapore.

Water; Clean water with good movement, pH 6.5 – 7.2, Temp 73 – 81 F, Soft to medium hard.

Size ; 2 ¾” Females, males are slightly smaller.

Corydoras Sterbai are a great community fish but make sure you feed them as any bottom dweller. They are diurnal showing signs of consciousness at night as well as during the day. I feed them the same as any other cory up until conditioning time using, catfish tablets, brine shrimp, even flakes if they get to the bottom. They even begun to enjoy my pleco miracle food canned green beans frozen on a cookie sheet and thawed to serve. Now onto my breeding tank.

Breeding tank setup, I condition my fish here but it can be done in the maintenance. The problem I have found with conditioning any fish in the maintenance tank was mess. To condition these fish it is important that they eat A) variety of high fats and B) that they eat often up to 4 times a day. Your breeding tank should be filled with aged tap water and running at a desired temp, I prefer about 78 F. I use a black sand substrate but any smooth fine substrate will do, just enough to cover the bottom. Also I use only an air driven sponge filter during conditioning. This makes them a bit more comfortable it seems and they find their food better. Providing that they were not starving in the maintenance tank, conditioning shouldn’t take much more than a week. My water properties I keep fairly high at this time, pH 7.4,temp 78 F and hardness around 80 ppm. With a water softener I do not adjust my hardness for them.

Now when my females are almost bursting with eggs, I will put her with the lone male. Part of my early frustration was using 2 females to 1 male; it seemed that the male was confused. Also cold water changes weren’t working. Adding pre spawned in water from other cories didn’t work either. Getting mad finally brought about eggs.

My tank is ready now, as are my fish. I take out 50% of the water usually from a 10-gallon tank. I replace it with 3 gallons of RO and 2 gallons of snow or rain whatever you can get. If it were rain I would cool it off in the fridge for awhile just until it gets icy. Mix the water together and slowly add 1 gallon at a time. At this point you want to take out your big powerhead filter and place it facing long ways in your tank, I face mine a little into the side to get the maximum current I can. I don’t add plants but adding Java fern or Java moss in the way of the current works if it doesn’t blow away. Now every half hour I add 1 gallon of water as your temp should slowly drop to around 72 F but keep an eye on it, I set my thermo at 70 F just incase it starts to dip too fast. Raise your powerhead as you raise the water so it is bashing the top of your water well. By now your cories should look quite uncomfortable as though they can’t rest. This is what you want don’t turn off the filter to let them rest. Now that your tank is full and current is heavy, sit back and wait for the show. It should be almost immediately that they begin to restlessly clean the glass and plants if you use them. Feed them up until they start to lay as feeding during spawn, which can span over hours, may encourage egg eating.

I honestly can’t say how many eggs to expect as my fish love caviar so I pick the eggs as fast as I can. I would say that my female has lain around 80 eggs at one time to which I retrieved 20. They eat fast! The eggs I put in a vase as in flower vase, I like the shape for aerating purposes. I add an airstone and fill it to the small neck of the vase with tank water adding 1 drop of methyl blue. I find the eggs hatch with great success, strange with all that current, although a few do pass on in the coming days. In 4-5 days I usually have hatches and their egg sacs depleted in another 4-5 after that. Temp seems to play a big part here so watch your fish close don’t just feed them in 4 days as they may not eat yet. The fry once hatched are very long but also very skinny. Using dark sand in the container you hatch them in help to see them easier as well like most catfish fry they develop fungus on their bellies with no substrate at all. As soon as the yolksac is gone, I start feeding with microworms and after 5 days, BBS and sera micro food. I feed them about 4 times a day when possible so it is a good idea to do up to 50% water changes every day. I keep them in the vase up to 2 weeks and then transfer them to a 5 or 10 gallon tank. Once in the bigger tank I only do 10% water changes daily because I am cheap and water is expensive, hahaha. The fry grow slowly, but start gaining color as early as 2 weeks. They are fairly hardy at this point and start to move around a little more especially at night, which I find is the best time to feed them. As they grow a bit they accept a lot more foods and can be tried with frozen daphnia, frozen BBS; grindal worms even small catfish tablets.

The most important part is to keep them in clean fresh water for best growth. The part where I got mad was when they wouldn’t spawn but the female was almost falling over because she was so ready. I felt I’d teach them a lesson by giving them a good snow chill down and blast them with my biggest powerhead. Well they taught me.

Aside from all of this spawning talk these are some great fish to keep very pretty and quite entertaining. They get big for cories and are one of my favorites. Obviously they are quite expensive and a good challenge to breed but they are pretty hardy fish over all. I guess I should finish off by giving snow some credit as in the last two months I can accredit snow to 15 spawns in my tanks from tetras to cichlids, I am going to miss it more than most Albertans and will welcome it back next year with open spawning tanks, oops, I mean arms. For a nice change or a good spawning challenge I suggest and wholeheartedly recommend this awesome catfish.

NOTE: If you do spawn these fish and are blessed with eggs beware of this and don’t repeat my mistake. The eggs unlike most other fish don’t turn dark much before hatching. If they are not totally fungus filled or rotten, don’t throw them out yet. My eggs have been totally white even with hair starting on them and had little tails pushing them around. I could not see any eyes in them or black whatsoever yet managed 19 fry out of 20 white eggs. I threw out my first batch of eggs thinking they weren’t fertile, talk about learning from mistakes. The only bad part about spawning these fish is you don’t want to get rid of any, hahaha.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Actually back in my days at A.C.E. I had submitted it. I may have changed a line since though spelling error. It was in last years issues I believe. The one guy I know who tried the same method though also spawned his sterbai which were 3 years old and he could never get to spawn, The last ACE auction he sold three bags of them for good dollars and loved the whole experience.

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  • 6 years later...

thank you very much for the article, i have 11 sterbai in my 55 gallon planted SA tank, and the little guys breed for me once a month although im usually late to try and gather up eggs, i do like the insight on how to trigger a spawn. Some insight on my set up, it seems that the cories seem to prefer spawning on the glass of the tank behind vallisneria or other tall grasses, maybe you could incorporate this in your set up and see if it makes a difference?

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