Feeding Cories

I picked up three JuliI Cories last night. So cute! They adjusted fine and are swimming well, but I have some concerns about them getting enough food. I have 5 very food aggressive platies. When I fed them this morning I sprinkled flakes and then put in NLS Community. The NLS sinks beautifully, going straight to the bottom. I thought I was set! The platies ate the flakes in about 30 seconds, as they always do, then swooped down to vacuum up the NLS out of the gravel. They spent the next half hour picking out every 1mm piece out of the gravel even though I'd just given them a mountain of flakes. *sigh* I can't be sure the cories got anything and I'm seriously worried they will starve. Are the little bits and pieces that might be left over enough for the cories? I'm not sure what else I can do. I do have another larger sinking pellet that I'm going to try tonight with a flake distraction, but I'm pretty sure the same thing will happen, just more slowly because it will take longer to eat the big pellets.

 

Corys are like little tractor trailers. They will get enough food, trust me. Corys are scavengers. Mine eat what the rest of my tank eats and they certainly get their fair share. You might want to start using wafers rather than pellets. That way, the corys can just crawl all over it and the platies may share a little more easily.

I think you may be overfeeding. You've got a large tank and very few fish in it. They don't need twice daily feedings. I feed my tanks every other day and all my corys are fat and happy.

 

Corys are like little tractor trailers. They will get enough food, trust me. Corys are scavengers. Mine eat what the rest of my tank eats and they certainly get their fair share. You might want to start using wafers rather than pellets. That way, the corys can just crawl all over it and the platies may share a little more easily.

I think you may be overfeeding. You've got a large tank and very few fish in it. They don't need twice daily feedings. I feed my tanks every other day and all my corys are fat and happy.

I've been a little worried about that too, to be honest, but I've followed the advice I've seen which is don't give them more than they can eat in two minutes and don't leave uneaten food in the tank. None of my fish have the big bellies I've seen in so many pictures of platies and they really don't leave any food behind. When I vacuum the gravel there's no uneaten food there, just plant bits and fish . As soon as the food is gone they graze on every surface in sight. I did cut back to one feeding a day once last week because I was worried about that but they got very aggressive at feeding time, lunging at each other and guarding areas with food.

 

I also feed my tanks everyother day, the tanks that have cories get a mixture of NLS pellets( for the higher swimming fish), NLS algae wafters andsome shrimp pellets for the cories, shrimp and snails.

 

Aha! The big pellets work much better. When the piggy platies try to gulp them up they explode into a thousand tiny shrimpy pieces so the cories can swoop in and get some! So, I think what I'll do is flakes in the morning until I run out (this is a trial size I've been using). After that I'll do NLS in the mornings and when the lights go out I'll drop in a few of the shrimp pellets.