C. trilineatus breeding age - how old is too old?

uaru · Post by **uaru** » 25 Jan 2013, 23:41

Hello fellow catfish lovers,

New to the boards here, but a longtime catfish lover.

I've just moved a group of 7 Corydoras trilineatus from a community tank to a 10-gal breeding tank (sand bottom with a piece of driftwood and some moss for cover). This is embarrassing, but I don't know exactly when we got them! (We moved house several times, and took fish from people who moved away or couldn't keep their tanks anymore, so our cory inventory is a confused mess.) The three oldest are maybe 7-8 years old, and the youngest are probably at least 2-3 years old. We don't have any experience breeding cories, so how old is too old? I'm guessing the 2-3 year olds are in a good breeding age range, but are the 7-8 year olds "menopausal"?

Thanks in advance!

MatsP · Post by **MatsP** » 25 Jan 2013, 23:49

Fish do not appear to stop breeding at any given age - unless they die. I've had Ancistrus breed a few weeks before they die from what appears to be "old age". I'm not sure if this holds true for ALL fish, but I would expect corys to breed for several years beyond 10 if they are well looked after in general.

--
Mats

Bas Pels · Post by **Bas Pels** » 26 Jan 2013, 08:51

I got/have had some cichlids which seem to have stoppped breeding because of old age

However, a cichlid is not a catfish, I would not state the because of these cichlids Mats might be wrong for Corydoras.

panaque · Post by **panaque** » 26 Jan 2013, 13:02

I have 7 year old that still spawn regularly and I am sure I have read about other species still going strong after 15 years. So I think you'll be fine.
With Apistogramma dwarf cichlids on the other hand I have noticed that females only seem able to breed for a year at most, even if they live for another couple of years afterwards. I get the impression they can produce only a finite number of eggs in a lifetime (not unusual among animals). In the wild the odds are that they get eaten before they run out. Elderly tetras seem to go menopausal as well.
Catfish are odd in that they generally live much longer lives (in captivity at least) than other fish of comparable size in the same habitat.

uaru · Post by **uaru** » 27 Jan 2013, 18:39

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! I'm giving these little guys (and girls) some time in this tank on their own, so I guess I'll see what happens. I'll post a breeding report if anything interesting happens.

uaru · Post by **uaru** » 24 Apr 2013, 01:00

Good news: it took them a little "practicing" (they laid some very small clutches of eggs the first few times), but the old trilineatus group finally came through!

The one thing that's surprising to me is the range in development between the siblings. I've never raised cory eggs before, so I don't know, is this common? The parents were laying eggs for a couple of days before I pulled them out of the tank, so there might be 48 hours between the first egg that got laid and the last egg. The first fry hatched maybe 4 days before the last fry hatched. Now there are fry in the tank that look like they only absorbed their yolk sacs 2-3 days ago, while the largest fry may be >1 cm long and look just like miniature cory adults.

Anyways, I'm pretty excited about this, even though they're beginner little fish!

I have to start somewhere... I also found some emperor tetra (Nematobrycon palmeri) fry in a community tank, so I'm hoping this is a good omen for some of the other fish.

Sorry about the bad photos - my old little digital camera doesn't have a manual focus option.

: fry 1-2 days after hatching

: fry after ~10 days

C. trilineatus breeding age - how old is too old?

C. trilineatus breeding age - how old is too old?

Re: C. trilineatus breeding age - how old is too old?

Re: C. trilineatus breeding age - how old is too old?

Re: C. trilineatus breeding age - how old is too old?

Re: C. trilineatus breeding age - how old is too old?

Re: C. trilineatus breeding age - how old is too old?