# Peppered Cory Eggs



## Morpheus (Nov 12, 2008)

Ok, I have some silly questions. I have 4 peppered cory cats in a 29 gallon tank(among other fish). Here is the deal. They plaster the aquarium with eggs every time I change the water. Changed it last night, and I wake up to find the glass, heater and and filter intake covered in eggs. This time was the worst, there has to be close to 100 eggs in there. I'm pretty sure I have 2 males and 2 females, judging by the size of them. Ok, so here goes my silly questions:

1. Is there a way to tell if these eggs are fertilized? I usually just scrape them off the glass at the next water change, but last time I left a cluster of them in there for 8 days and they simply turned brown and fuzzed over.

2. Is this a perpetual, ongoing thing? I mean, I change 50% of the water every fourth day, and it never fails that the next morning there are eggs everywhere. Every. Time.

3. Other than separating the males and females, is there anything I can do to either speed this up or stop it? Short of a cory hysterectomy?

4. Should I leave them on the sides of the aquarium? Or try gently scraping them off and put them in a breeder net? Up until now I have had no desire to breed them, but the little buggers are so darn persistent!

Thanks in advance for any help or insight!


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## Chromedome52 (Jul 25, 2009)

Cold, fresh water is a common trigger used for spawning many _Corydoras_. When the eggs turned brown they were developing, so they were certainly fertile. When the eggs hatch, the remaining parts of the shells then fungus over. Likely the wigglers were eaten after they hatched, either by the parents or other fish in the tank. If you had some sort of thick cover like Java Moss, a few fry might have occasionally survived.

If you wish to raise them, you can scrape off the eggs and put them in a shallow container until they hatch. Meth blue isn't usually necessary if you watch for infertile eggs and remove them. When the fry pop out, remove the remaining eggshells or they will fungus up and contaminate the water. Use a separate tank to raise up the fry; breeder nets that hang on the inside of the tank are a waste of money, they cause more deaths than they prevent. They are a holdover from an ancient time when we didn't realize how much space was required for even the smallest fish, and should be relegated to the trash heap with UG filters. (Sorry, rant over.)

The fry can be fed live or frozen bbs, or even finely crushed flakes. One breeder used to actually feed shrimp pellets to the fry tanks, and the baby Cories ate at them as they softened. Keep the tank clean, it's not easy to siphon up around baby catfish, but use airline tubing and a white container (with albinos, a dark container is used), so that you can find the fry that accidentally got sucked up by the tubing. It will happen, so plan for it. IME, they grow pretty quickly, so like any baby, keep them fed and clean and you will have them raised up in no time at all.

_Corydoras paleatus _is one of the easiest species to raise, along with _C. aeneus_. They're pretty hard to kill, and if you give it a good effort you will certainly raise up a bunch of young. (I was going to say a batch of kittens, but that sounded too girly.  )


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