Breeding Cory CW010 ‘Gold Laser’ by Bradley Moore
Temp:79
TDS:30
Tank:29 gallon
I have had a love/hate relationship with Corys for as long as I’ve been keeping fish. There are many people that are very good at breeding catfish, and I am not one of those people! I have tried to breed Corys many times and I’ve always had trouble getting the fish to breed, or able to even get good eggs. I finally cracked the code and I detailed that in the article I wrote about breeding Cory sp. ‘Black’. The main things that end up working for me were cold soft water and lots of black worms. Those few things alone spelled almost instant success!!!!
At one time when Mike Downey was breeding these fish, I was able to middle man hundreds of these CW010’s to fellow hobbyist. But…for me it was bitter sweet because, while I was still supplying great fish, they were not mine and most certainly not from my fishroom! After 2 years of keeping these fish I ended up losing my group during our 2 house move thingy we did in a 4 month time period.
Fast forward to March 2015. I got bit by the bug again once my Discus itch was scratched and I was looking for fish that didn’t require me to heat 500 gallons of water to 86+ degrees. I wanted to go back to keeping fish I truly liked, and something that was going to be a challenge to breed. Looking through old pictures I came across lots of picture of gold laser corys I had once had. I started sending IM’s and text to people who might be keeping them. I found out that Jason Stephens and Mark Huffman both had groups that were from different sources. I was able to sweet talk both dudes, and make some deals to get the fish. Not sure how, but I was able to have all the fish in my tanks within a few weeks (which was super awesome). From there I set the C. gold laser, C. sp. black, C. sterbai, and Aspidoras albater in at 4×29 gallon drip system to breed. I was able to successfully breed the orange laser and the blacks before I had a hot water line burst above my tanks and cook about 600-800 dollars of breeding stock and fry (I almost cried). Luckily, I had moved a few spawns over to another grow out system across the room before the leak thus, allowing me to grow out and BAP the fry.