C Aeneus spawning question

[violet]

I have a group of 9 young but breeding age corys which had their couple of small spawns in June (?) I had a good hatch rate but life got complicated, I couldn't care for them for several days and lost the fry. It got hot and although the fish were in the coolest room I could find, no luck although the females were clearly full of eggs.

They were thrilled by the cool waterchanges but no spawning.

I had an epiphany and figured out what they wanted and bingo, eggs. The first spawns in june were all up high and I had plenty of time to collect eggs, no fish were eating them which I thought unusual. This time the corys weren't interested but the BN plecs ate them while I was getting the the few things I needed to collect them. There was a fair number of nice fertile looking eggs.

So I tried again with the new trick and sure enough there was an all day marathon cory orgy. They kept spawning while I was removing the eggs. The BN started eating eggs so I caught them and got them out. (it's just the corys & an unproven pair of browns living in the tank)

What I noticed was the longer this went on, the less sticky the eggs were and more which were completely opaque white, not the way eggs which had hatched in the past had looked.

I'm no cory spawning expert, I'm used to a few fish participting, not every single one at once. And certainly not going on hour after hour like that.

It appears all the females are now empty of eggs. So I am starting with a fresh slate. It would be so convenient if I could get them to ALL spawn in one day on a regular basis.

The first specific question is does a female holding eggs, being ripe for an extended period of time, degrade some of the eggs?

Next, do some females naturally have more sticky eggs than others or do they just run out of egg-glue (?????) after a while? While I was watching the orgy (oh, like you wouldn't ) a female was up on the glass laying and the eggs were just falling, only a few stuck. This is towards the end of the *event*.

I look in the container with the HUNDREDS of eggs and most of them I vacuumed up with ice maker tubing. I just kept siphoning and adding water back in so I could siphon some more.

Even though these are just C Aeneus, they have some unusual traits making them very worth breeding. If I coule stabilize the trait and cross them with blacks... we can all have dreams can't we?

[Sprite42]

Are the males actually following and fertilizing as the females are dropping? If not, this could account for the white eggs, which are not ferilized. I have noticed that when my females are in a hurry, so to speak, the eggs tend drop more often than stick.

If you plant or use artificial ground covering (plants) fairly thickly where the eggs fall, there is a good chance they will survive if viable.

[violet]

Bare tank with potted plants. Cory eggs are held & fertilized before they are deposited.

Being unable to get even one fish to spawn for weeks I was not moving the fish to a dedicated spawning tank. If/ when I can reliably get them to spawn on cue I may but in the mean time they just stay in their permanent tank.

Unlike say a golfish spawn where all the eggs start out looking good but the unfertilize soon turn white, these eggs were white coming straight from the fish. I am asking if holding the eggs for as long as the fish did caused some to be degraded.

The fallen eggs has zero adhesive power. The good normal sticky eggs would stick to anything and everything, even after being removed from the tank. Other eggs were completely un-sticky.

EDIT: Never mind, apparently no one know beans about corys. I'll go find someplace with better info.