Corydoras
duplicareus
(formerly misidentified as Corydoras adolfoi)
by
Eric Bodrock
 Corydoras
duplicareus (formerly misidentified as Corydoras adolfoi) – This beautiful, orange-capped Cory is
probably my favorite of them all. In good, adult color, the black band
across the back & black mask over the eyes is jet black, bringing
out the bright orange on the head even more. I would say they are a
medium size as far as Corys go with males growing to 4.5 cm and females
a little larger, to 5 cm. My spawning group of eight adults, half male
and half female, is housed in system “A”. This tank does vary from
the other tanks on the system in one manner; the overflow, drainpipe was
lowered by about 3 inches. The reason for this is because of their
unusual spawning method. When
they lay their eggs they like to place them close to the surface and in
the corners too. I have even found eggs as much as 3-4 mm out of the
water! As odd and unusual as that is, it’s even more bizarre that half
the eggs in the spawn will be buried deep into a sunken mop…talk about
extremes! Anyways, by keeping the water level lower, it is easier to
spot eggs and reach them if you want to move them into a hatching tank.
Their eggs are sticky, not the stickiest of all Corys, (like C. matae),
but they will stick to your finger the first time you touch them as you
roll them off the glass. Their eggs are quite large, 2 mm or maybe even
a smidgen more. When first seen, if they are viable eggs, they appear to
be dark in color; brownish sort of, in the middle and fading to a
lighter gray/cloudy color towards the outside. As with all Corys, when
the egg is snow white it is not a good, viable egg and will not hatch.
Hatch ratio of the eggs to the amount they lay is very high, over 90%,
nearly 100%. Spawns aren’t large in size. My largest spawn contained
around sixty eggs, though it is possible that two females spawned at
once because spawns normally range between six and twenty-five eggs.
Also, it’s not uncommon for the spawning group to lay several eggs a
day over the course of a few days. Spawning usually occurs during the
daylight hours, and just not in the morning, but nighttime spawns are
not out of the question! My parents have never bothered their eggs. I
know a handful of folks that raise their fry in the tank with the adults
with just a bunch of ground cover for the fry to hide in. Fry grow
pretty quick. At 1 cm in length you can just start to see their orange
cap develop and at the same time the band on their back and over the
eyes start to darken. By 15 cm they show exact adult coloration, cute as
can be!
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