I noticed a local fish shop was doing a deal on julii corys. On examination I noted that the barbels were rather short on most of them and I was hesitant to buy them. From my experience corys with little or no barbels don’t last long if at all. A week or so the shop still had the same fish, so I checked if the shop would give me a weeks money back guarantee on the fish, when they said yes I decided to take a chance with buying 3 of them.

I put the corys in a 10 gallon quarantine tank and feed them a mix of food, including lots of tubiflex. The reason for feeding them lots of tubiflex was that I had read that it is good for helping corys grown their barbels back.

I have had the corys 3 weeks now. They are very healthy and have already grown most of their barbels back. From this experience and others of feeding tubiflex to corys, I think the article I read is right. I imagine there may be a scientific reason for this, which of course I don’t know but from my experience I would recommend that people in general don’t buy corys with almost no barbels, but also if you have a cory with damaged barbels then I would strongly recommend that tubiflex is fed to them.

I think these fish had suffered in the shop from being put into a tank that had rough gravel that was damaging their barbels. Personally I use ‘pea gravel’ which is very smooth and round mixed with kiddies ‘play sand’ or just the sand on it’s own.

To finish, here is a pic of one of the new fish looking healthy and with most of its barbels grown back.

I may give that a shot myself.

I also have a 'Cory recovery experiment' going.

I have some young Cory's that I obviously released too young, before 'growing out'. In the past, this hasn't really been a problem, but in this instance, I believe there was too much competition for food. As a result, I had about a dozen slightly malnourished, certainly way under size, if not stunted Cory's.

I recognise a couple of Cory's from the same batch, and they have 4 or 5 times the body mass.

Anyway, these Cory's also have stunted barbels, no doubt from being forced to dig deep into the gravel.

So, I've collected them up, and placed them in a netting enclosure, with a Perspex floor. So no competition, and no digging for food. I've lost half of them, but I feel they would have died anyway. A couple were in bad shape. But what remain, to me, are looking good. Their bodies seem to be filling out a bit. And their color has darkened, a good sign.

Of course they'll never grow full size, it's far too late for that. But your tubifex idea, Fishy, might well improve things a great deal. It's going on the Menu.

those photos of your corys show corydoras trilineatuis not corydoras julii often mistaken. apart from that i personaly would not keep any corys in a tank with gravel i would use sand every time all corys burrow, gravel is not a natural substrate but can be the cause of damage to the barbels

The gravel itself must make some sort of difference. If I had to find a difference between my gravel in the Large Tank, to that in the Small Tank, the list would read;

Large Tank gravel is darker than Small Tank.
Large Tank gravel is larger than Small Tank.
Large Tank gravel is smoother than Small Tank.

Now, that last one is the critical point. Although in my case, I believe it not to be a worry to my own fish. My evidence is in 15 years of keeping Cory's without any Barbel damage being attributed to the gravel. Those young Cory's I've mentioned above, I believe to be a special case.

However, I do agree, that there'd be Aquarium gravel out there that is damaging to this type of fish.


And on that note, I haven't fed the babies this morning!... Two weeks old, have recently got their freckles. C.aeneus. They're doing really well in my new (modified) enclosure. I've become so complacent, I haven't even counted them yet !! Pics to upload soon...

This is a good topic. My tank's gravel is like river pebbles, a mixture of sizes from BB-sized to flat marble-sized. It's all smooth though, so would it still be a problem? Cories and loaches are my favorite types of fish, and I'd hate to be contributing to any bad health. If anyone thinks I should change gravel size, please let me know, and how to mix it. I could probably mix up BB-sized gravel with aquarium sand, if that's a good idea. Unless they prefer darker substrate, then I'd probably have to shop around, because my local fish stores don't stock dark substrate.

Also, how do I keep sand substrate clean? If it makes a difference, I only have fake plants for now.

I think smooth (pea gravel as it is known here) is fine for corys. I have never experienced any problems with this. The same with stones and rocks, if u include them, as long as there are smooth and have no sharp edges the corys will be ok. The kind of gravel they had in the shop that I got the corys from was very jagged and possibly sharp in places hence I assume that was the problem with these corys and their damaged barbells. The tubiflex certainly seemed to help, I think, in repairing the damage.

If ur gravel is smooth mizpriz I wouldn't worry. If the corys u have, have a full set of healthy looking barbels and u have had them for a while then there is no need for u to change ur current set up unless u want to.

Personally I find a sand and gravel mix works well for my plants. I started using a mix almost by accident and experiment. I like the way it looks too. I put the gravel down 1st and then added sand. The 2 layers soon became mixed because of my corys digging in it. In my tank a lot of it looks like a mix of sand and gravel but I also get a few 'pools' of just sand. I think this just depends on how the corys dig in certain bits and rest in others.

I have never worried about gravel colour. I have always used light coloured natural looking gravel and the sand I use is very light. I have read that some fish prefer darker substrates but I have never bothered with this and it doesn’t seem to have affected any of the fish I have. I always make sure I have places that are shaded and secluded though. This can be from rocks, wood or plants that provide naturally shaded bits and hidey-holes.

I now have a couple of tanks that are just sand and my corys do seem to like it. Regarding cleaning sand, if u slope it a bit from front to back it can help that the dirt will tend to collect at the front and make it easier to remove when doing water changes. The method of cleaning I use is to hold the end of the siphon pipe/tubing that I use (I use 9/12mm tubing) about an inch or slightly less from the sand as I am removing water for the water change and move the pipe about to hoover up any dead plant or dirt etc. I do get a bit of sand being sucked up but that collects at the bottom of the bucket. When pouring out the tank water from the bucket I do it slowly so as not to pour away the sand and when I fill the bucket with new water and siphon this back to the tank any sand that is in the bucket gets sucked back into the tank.

Hope this helps.

Oh yea and cheers clunkster, I stand corrected regarding the type of cory. I had to check to be sure but I see that u r correct. The difference, for anyone interested, is the Julii only has very fine spots that are not reticulated at all like the Tilineatus. Plus on the Trilineatus the main stripe up the body extends further than the Julii whose stripe tends to fade half way along. I blame the shop for my mistake , i.e. they had named them wrong as shops often do

Thanks for the great advice, Fishypaw! I was glad to read that, because I'd rather not have to spend so much money on all new gravel, whether a different size or color. It's so expensive. On the other hand, playsand is "dirt" cheap (hee hee), and I already have about 30 pounds of it left over from when I bought some for my hermit crab tank.

They all seem to be healthy. I've had them for several months or longer, and their barbels are all nice looking. Oh, and what is Tubiflex? I don't think I've seen it in our pet stores.

Do I have to treat the sand in any way before adding it to the tank? I'm definitely interested in creating some nice piles of sand for the guys to dig in. I do have some nice dark caves and a little forest of fake plants for them to hide in. I'm planning on soon adding a series of PVC tunnels too.

Curious about the gorgeous cory pictured, is he also known as a Schwartz? He looks a lot like a group of Schwartz cories I had a few months ago. Active, funny little guys. I lost them all when I had the neon tetra disease go through my tank.

The cory does look a bit like a shwartzi cory but as clunkster pointed out it is actualy a trilineatus cory and not a julii cory as i was falsely led to believe by the LFS that had missnamed them.

When i am putting sand in the tank, i give it a good rinse in a bucket 1st to remove most of the fine dust. I then place the wet sand at the bottom of the empty tank and then pour the tank water on to a plate that is sat on top of the sand to stop the water disturbing the sand. I find u do get a little bit of cloudiness to start with but this settles and doesnt affect the fish. It may take a day to fully settle.

The tubiflex i use is dried and comes in cubes. I tend to cut these in to 4 bits perhaps which i hold in the water at the top of the tank and rub between my fingers until it becomes water logged and mostly breaks up into little strands of worms which then sink to the bottom. 1 quarter of a cube is good enough to give up to say 6 corys a good feed. I think u can buy it frozen, i am not sure if u can get it fresh too but dried seems to be ok to me.

Oh and i just realised that ur name was miss-spelled in the last post. i composed the message in 'word' and pasted ur name into the document, the auto correct must have messed ur name up, lol, sorry. i have changed it back to mizpriz and not 'misprix' as word seemed to think it was, which sounds a little rude

I ended up with Frozen Blood Worms today. I guess there's not much difference to Tubifex Worms. I sprinkled some in the Large Tank. I reckon most of the Angels, Tetras, and Guppies, thought it was Fish Poo, as there wasn't the usual rush to snap it up. You could see the Angels just sitting there, watching it float down, deciding what to do!

I think even smooth gravel could pose a problem, if too large. Wider gaps allow the food to fall deeper into your gravel. Surely if the Cory needs to nose in a bit harder, to dig deeper, that creates more wear on it's snout and barbels.

firstly a lot of shops mistakenly name trilineatus as julii as they are very similar but then a lot of corys look alike which adds to the confusion sand is the natural substrate for corydoras but if you are having no trouble with damaged barbels then you could say it alright with your gravel incidently loaches have the same problem what you need to remember with gravel is that there are indeed gaps wich can be collection points for detrius and thus then having an effect which can damage the barbels so a gravel cleaner is actually a very good piece of equiptment
yes you can buy tubifex live but then tell you what follow this link

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so now you know

These Frozen Blood Worms I picked up today, didn't look like any Fly Larvae I've ever seen...

Someone mentioned siphoning up some sand (above). If you use the standard sort of Gravel Vac, see if you can extend the wide intake tube. This should give the sand more of a chance to fall back down.

Have you ever considered buying Corymans Cory book, Clunkster?

Well, if that's all it takes, I've got this bridge I've been trying to get rid of...

nice try tell you what though you pay the airfair then you got a deal!

with your lack of answer i will take that as a no then