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Breeding Corydoras gossei

by Bud and Cathy White
First published in "Tank Topics", Greater Akron Aquarium Society, April/May 2001
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Corydoras gossei is fairly new to the hobby, being described by Nijssen in 1972. They come from a creek near Guajara Mirim, in Rondonia, Brazil. They reach over two inches in length. Both male and female are darkly colored in the top half of the body and head, with yellow/white in the lower half. They have orange/yellow markings, and the front spine of the dorsal and pectoral fire are the same orange/yellow. The rest of the fins are mostly clear, with wavy vertical stripes on the tail.

Since we have always enjoyed the different types of corys, we try to pick up new ones when we can! And from where else better to get corys than Eric Bodrock of Pennsylvania.   Eric's been breeding a lot of different corys for quite a while now, and has been very successful with them, as the local auctions prove when he brings them in! Eric has been a friend of ours for more years than he wants us to admit to, and as friends that keep fish usually do, we don't hesitate to share any fish we have. That's where we got our Corydoras gossei fry last year. We have a group of seven:  5 males and 2 females, in a ten-gallon bare tank with a sponge filter,  and after only about 9 months they have spawned for us!

Most corys spawn on a flat surface or in a spawning mop, and since we did not know for sure how the gossei spawned, we provided both. To our surprise they used both: there were eggs on the glass, the mop and on the filter. We also had some plastic plants in the tank and found eggs on these also! We set up a 2-1/2 gallon tank with a sponge filter to put the eggs in, and using a razor blade we scraped some of the eggs off the glass, and picked some out of the mop, and put them in the tank. We added a airstone close to the eggs for better aeration, then we covered the tank to keep light out. Most of the eggs were infertile and fungused over the next couple of days. We removed those as soon as we saw them, using a 1/8" air line tubing and a short piece of 1/8" rigid tubing for a siphon tube. This is not unusual - in most of the fish the female seems to develop before the males and the male can't fertilize all of the eggs at first.

It took about seven days for the fry to hatch out, and we started by feeding infusoria squeezed from a seasoned sponge, and then micro worms, small fry food, then finally fresh hatched baby brine shrimp.

We ended up with a few fry that made it and are growing very well. Hopefully next time we will have more fry.

We would like to add that Eric feeds a lot of worms to his breeders, which really helps to get the breeders in shape and ready to spawn. We don't keep the worms, but we found that when we fed earthworm flakes very heavily and made 2-3 water changes a week, that was when the gossei spawned. We did get to watch the spawning and they acted just like others we have seen. The males get agitated around the female and when the female has a clutch of eggs in her pelvic fins, she mouths the males' anal vents, then looks for a place to lay the eggs. This goes on for quite a while.

Hopefully some of this information can help you with any corys you may want to work with!