|
Corydoras barbatus is one of those special fish that has a cachet in the fish hobby. It has a reputation as a fairly rare fish with striking looks, as well as being hard to spawn. I've found the first two to be true, but not necessarily the third. I picked up some fish from Rich Smaciarz at a Minnesota Aquarium Society flea market. I paid a good price and got some fish I always wanted to own. (I picked up another bag later at an auction.) I took them home and put them in a 10-gallon tank on the bottom shelf of a rack in the corner of the fish room. The tank was equipped with a home made foam filter, a thin layer of tan medium sized gravel on the bottom and a clump of Java moss for looks and cover. The temperature in the tank hovered around 73-74 F? and the pH stayed around 6.0 because of the 90% RO water I was keeping them in. I fed them frozen blood worms, black worms when I had them, staple flake and baby brine shrimp. They seemed to eat anything I fed them.
The barbatus survived in their small corner of the fish room suffering from benign neglect until the Thursday before the fishroom tour. I was running about scraping unsightly algae from everything when I noticed the eggs I was just about to scrape from the front glass of the barbatus tank. As the tank next to them was empty, I decided to move some of the eggs using the roll them on your finger, roll them on the glass again method that I heard about from Ken Nordby. By Saturday I had fry in the bare tank. I never noticed any in the parents' tank, so I presume they ate them. I started feeding the fry about three days later with baby brine shrimp. Other than keeping junk off of the tank bottom and doing about 10% water changes every week, that is all the work I did with the fry.
My guess is the secret to Corydoras barbatus is low temperature and very soft water with a fairly low pH. Tank raised fish may also be easier to raise than wild caught. I've enjoyed keeping them and spawning them and would recommend them to anyone who as a cool place to keep them.
|
