What to do about rotted/missing barbels on cories?

WinterWind

WinterWind

Mad pianist
Feb 11, 2005
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I made a thread about this in general freshwater, but it might be more appropriate here. I bought 2 more leopard cories for my lone leopard yesterday, and they don't have barbels or they are very short. I didn't notice that in the shop. They are swimming around and seem okay. What can I do to help the cories? Should I treat for fin rot?
 
When I first acquired my Iridescent Shark, he didn't have any barbels. I didn't even know he was supposed to have any, but then, I didn't know he was really a catfish either. "Shark" is just because their appearance. Anyway, the Cichlids had short and/or frayed fins as well. I did the Melafix treatment on the entire tank and over time, the fins are longer and nicely tapered on the cichlids (one is even starting to grow his tail fin back, which was bitten off by a Piranha before I acquired the tank) and the I.D. Shark has some very nice barbels. I had to give him up today though. He did so well under my care that the guy is too big for my tank. He is occupying a very nice 50 gallon all to himself in an unusually nice LFS this evening.
 
Corys living in bad water will loose their barbels. The best thing you can do for them is provide plenty of water changes and time. If you feed them regularly enough, you should see them back in a few weeks. Good luck with your corys! You'll really enjoy the additions to your tank.
 
Yep, there are threads in here that claim they won't grow back.
One of my pepper corys lost almost all his barbels (like 80%!), but they grew back in a couple weeks to almost full length - you could not tell which one lost it's barbels comparing it with the other 3 pepper corys in the tank.

I dunno what happened (maybe overly aggressive CAE or one of the yellow labs), but it wasn't my substrate. I used to use small gravel that's a little under 1/4" in diameter on average - slightly smaller than "pea gravel" - and they are all rounded with very few sharp edges.
I have since overlayed some course sand over the coarser gravel, and they corys all love to dig in it!
 
Yeah, the cories I got were kept in a tank at the LFS with many many platies and other cories. I got a cory from the same tank a few weeks ago, and the cory was in perfect condition and it's barbels were nice and long. I guess a few more weeks in there for the other unlucky ones was too much and they started losing their barbels...:(

Thanks for the encouraging comments, Signus and f8l.
 
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Use a varied diet of sinking frozen and dried foods for the cories and do lots fo water changes and gravel vacuuming. That should help. Melafix seems to have helped my betta regrow some patches in his fins.
 
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