1st WC spawn

[C.B.Zoo]

Well after waiting and waiting for my WC metaes to spawn in a 10 gallon tank with lots of cooler W/C's.. and no spawning. Yet I get spawning from a not so typical change...
Start out with I wil describe the tank at first.. 10 gallon tank with rocks and gravel bottom few small stem plants of the Hygrophillia type and large clump of Java Moss Temp 72 deg. F PH 7.0 - 6.4 at various times... TDS maintianed at 125 ppm..
When a low front is going to come thru I use my R/O filter to make 38 gallons of 125 PPM water, as cold as I can by using icecubes to cool the water to below 68 deg. F. then performing 50% W/C before the front comes thru and wait... and wait and wait.. Rinse and repeat for about 4 months.... (Note I heat the remaing water up to 82 deg F for W/C's for my pair of spawning Discus)
Now I am getting tired of the look of the small pea gravel substrate...so yeaterday mornig I deciced to change it out to Pool Filter sand (My perfered substrate).
I hapeend to be filing my barrel up with "Pure" tds 25 ppm water from my R/O filter and after I switch everything arround I fill the tank back up with this water... note this water is at a temp of arround 78 deg....
and sudennly I have a spawn of these neat little cory cats... pretty smalll spawn only about 10 to 15 egss scattered all over the tank.. I will be colleting them later today for separtate rearing... I do not want the parents to eat these.
So moral of the story is... at least with these W/C metaes TDS and possibly sand substrate is much more important than weather fronts and cold water... I dont know if others have had this happen with W/C metaes or not but this is what worked for me.:clap::clap: final arameters of spawning tank.. TDS 50 PPM, PH 7.2, Temp 72 deg F..

 

[Doodles]

Thats excellent and thanks for the details which might help someone else:clap::clap:

 

[Joby]

Good luck with the eggs :clap:

 

[C.B.Zoo]

rescued eggs.

Well I went down and resuced the eggs this morning.. I got arround 25 of them about 1/3 appear not to be fertilized:cry: but on the other hand I now have spawned a W/C corey cat... I am planning on keeping them floating in a plastic container in the parents tank with some anti fungal with them and doing a daily W/C on the container until they are hatched out. I will then transfer them to a small 2 1/2 gallon tank once they have abzorbed their egg sack for grow out. once they get big enough they will go in my "grow out" tank a 29 gallon with bronze cories L340 fry and 3 "elegan" type grow outs..
my previous experience with spawning corey cats is based on Paletus Aneus and Pandas.. These seem to be more like panda spawns then the bronze / Paletus spawns I have seen. small spawns over a period of time versus one big spawn. Does this match with others who have spawned this cat?
After I get a few spawns from this group I am planning on moving on to a differnt corey... I will move this group to a "comunity" tank then try another group.
Which one should I try.. Schwartzi, Brochis Spendens, "Elegans type" (not sure which one) or Meleni?
I am leaning toward the Schwartzi as I have had them for awhile and have not had any luck with them yet....:dk:

 

[Joby]

Make sure you have an airstone in the container too for water movement

 

[Gem400]

Congrats with the spawn! Good luck with rearing the fry.
I'd be tempted with one of the elegans type sp as another project as most are relatively easy to spawn, the biggest issue being fry size as they tend to be much smaller than other cory fry.

Cheers
Gemma

 

[Irene0100]

excelelnt, well done, I suspect it was the sand plus all the fresh water.
any chance of photos?

 

[Bigjohnnofish]

i've found about the only fish i havent been able to spawn from multiple water changes is the L128,L200,L204..... (prob need more than 3 or 4 of them - anybody wanna sell me some?)

im a firm believer that most catfish adapt well to any temp,ph,hardness TDS levels etc... (within a reasonable range of course)
i think the most important thing is to get the nitrate levels down to as close to zero as possible... as the majority of catfish dont experience nitrate buildup in their natural environment...

fish that havent spawned quickly for me... receive 30% daily wc with heaps of food fed... keep this up untill they spawn... the longest time i've gone with a successful spawn is 18 days... the above mentioned fish went 30 days before i decided to give them a break....

i know theres lots of theories of how to trigger spawning... so heres one more!!!

 

[C.B.Zoo]

Well an update on the WC spawn of cories.. so far if I do a large 50% W/C with low TDS cold water the group almost imedialty spawns and scatters eggs all over the tank. two here three there and I have "rescued over 4 batches of eggs from the tank. I have floated them in their own 2.5 gallon tank with water from the parents tank in a small plastic box with an air stone and covered the tank. The eggs get a small ammount of meythl Blue to prevent fungus and I wait.. a week later nothing.. Two weeks and still nothing While wating I leave the other spawns in the tank with the parents and get the same results... Nothing. I am begining to think I have a group of 6 females.. The only problem with this is that within a day of resueing or leaving them in the tank I can see two different types of eggs one with a white center (not fertile) and one that stays light tan / brown.
Regardless of what I do I can not seem to get past the Egg laying stage to get viable fry. I dont know what the problem is. anyone out ther have any ideas?
The fish dont seem to have large spawns nothing more than 20-30 eggs per spawn with about 10% of them noticed after first day as being not fertile.

 

[Doodles]

Thanks for the update. Ill have a look around later, see if i can find anything that could help.

 

[RobHarrison]

Hey there is there anychance you could capture the corys into a white tub and post photos of them? People may be able to sex them for you, as im a novice at breeding i have 11 adult sterbai corys that like you lay eggs after a huge water change i collect the eggs and 3 days later i have a tub full of fry i think my bach has 4-5 large females and the rest males i watch them pair up before egg laying, would they lay eggs if there were no males present, im not sure about that one maybe someone on here would know.

 

[C.B.Zoo]

Well I have some news regarding these cories...
Yesterday I went down and did another cold low TDS water change and I noticed that there were two little ones scurring arround the tank!!! They were obviously from different spawns as they were markedly different in sizes.
It now appears that I do not have all females at least. I would still like to know what it takes to get a better survival rate then I am geting but at least now I know I have both male and females.
I do not want to pull them out of the tank they are in as it took me AGES to get these WC's to spawn and I do not want to distrurb them too much. I think my next attempt with a spawn will be to harvest the eggs and float them in a tub in their own tank with no methyl blue but covered so no light gets in and see if that works.

 

[RobHarrison]

Thats great news when ive let the corys breed you really have to collect the eggs sharpish as the other corys that didnt lay go and eat them! I just float a clear sandwich box filled with water and a air stone fixed to the bottom with suckers and then i attach a sucker with a U on it (used for keeping heaters to the glass) stick that to the sandwich box then clip it to the inlet pipe on the external filter so it doesnt float off and take on water, 99% of the fry survive hatching and then its a case of crushing some pellets and feeding them a few times a day, i also scoop out the water with a smaller tub and do water changes using the tank water twice a day, never used any chemicals before bringing up eggs and fry, water changes and air stone is suficent. All the best for the next atempt

 

[C.B.Zoo]

I have tried all the ususal varriaons on gettingbetter fry survival. Keeping eggs inthe tank using a floating tub in the parents tank. usting a separate tank for the fry. In each of the many varriations on the above theme the ONE constant in all was a reliance on Methyl Blue to limit fungus.
So This time I Rescued 25 eggs fromthe parents tank putthem in a tub with water from the parents tank and an air stone for water movement. I will also cover the tank to min. fungus due to light. but I will omit the Methyl Blue and see what I get.
If this does not work then the next step is to remove/Minimize light in the parents tank durring spawning as this might adversely affect egg development. There seems to e some dis-agreement on if this is the case but it is the only other variable that I have left to change, that I can think of.

 

[RobHarrison]

Ive always kept my light on, the only times ive seen the corys spawn are when the tank light is on or natural daylight lights up the tank, id definatly try and lose the meth blue, have to let us know how you get on

 

[C.B.Zoo]

Well so far this seems to be the route to suces for me..

I recued 25 eggs from the parents tank and placed them in a plastic tub with and air stone and water from the parents tank. Kept the temp the same as the parents tank, performed daily 90% WC with water from the parents tank, kept the separate tank covered with no light. Right now after I performed my WC i have 7 little wigglers swimming arround and out of the rest there were 4 unfertilized eggs which were removed so now I have 14 eggs left to hatch but they all look good I can see the little bodies inside the eggs so I hope to have more swiming little Metae cories soon!!:clap::clap::clap:
Now if only I could get the same results from my one breeding pair of discus...

 

[C.B.Zoo]

metae fry picts.

fry picts