Cory issues

[Yoemen]

Well I have had a 20 Long setup for about 14 months now. I have had a betta in it the whole time. The thing is, I am having a heck of a time keeping Corys alive in it. I a group of 5 for about 4 months, then they all pretty much croaked for no noticeable reason except for one. So I got 3 elegant corys and one swartz cory. All of them except for one died when the heater malfunctioned. I know the last one was a heater issue, but I now have 5 corys that I don't know what are and am just wondering if I need to quit with the corys. My betta is in great shape and my bigger tank is great, but this is starting to get old. Never had any water quality issues or anything. I had thought cories were pretty durable but am starting to wonder.


Thanks

[GirlieGirl8521]

What type of cories did you have the first time? Some types are a little more sensitive than others (like Pandas and the dwarf cories)? Also, what type of substrate do you have and is there alot of mulm on it?

[didy]

What is going on with the ones you have now, and did you just get them?

They can easily be injured by nets.

[fish_freak]

I would also lean towards substrate. I have noticed that cories a lot of times will not do well with gravel substrate but will thrive with sand. What are your water parameters as well? Don't forget betta's can live just about anywhere so just because he has done well does not mean that all is right with your water chemistry.

[naps]

where did you buy the corries?? Sometimes they can have parasites.
I live in Nassau Bay and there is a great shop called Aqua Zoo in Webster Texas off 45 and El Dorado.

[jm1212]

how often do you feed them?

[Cory Lover]

Hi,

How often and what do you feed them?

Cory Lover

[Yoemen]

They have a white sand substrate. I do biweekly water tests, weekly water changes. everything is 0 except nitrate ussually gets up around 15 prior to water change. I feed them either 2 shrimp pellets or 1 hikari tropical sinking wafer. The first cories I had were all Julli cories.

I will be honest, I ussually get them from Petco as they have a lot of different cories. The swartz cory I got from a LFS.

[RiVerfishgirl]

Most likely you just had bad luck.
Most of petcos fish are dying half the time, and they were probably weak and sick.
You have to watch REAL close if you buy fish from these places. I saw a tankful of fish with terrible fungus and finrot the other day at petsmart, and believe me some employees will sell you sickly fish.
Btw not bashing petsmart/petco employees, the guy we talked to the other day seemed fairly educated in fishkeeping, but mostly they just hire teenagers that need a part time job and don't care about fish.
In fact I've seen one of the LFS try to sell people fish with ich, so it happens everywhere.

[phaedraeos]

What temperature do you keep your tank at? The heater malfunction, was it too hot or too cold?

[Yoemen]

hot, I ussually keep it around 80 degrees, over thanksgiving it shot north of 90 at one point.

as for the source. The petco fish are the ones I currently have. The previous ones all came from an LFS.

[leavundst]

The temp fluctuations can't be good. And at 90 I think your on the way to trying to make soup.

[fishorama]

Many corys like a lower temp, maybe ~75*,some less. C. sterbai I think is often kept with discus & some others are heat tolerant.