# Missing Peppered Cory?



## TheBlur (Apr 16, 2014)

So I woke up this morning to feed my 3 peppered cory cats and 1 was missing... 1 was dead on the bottom of the tank.

The dead fish had no discoloration (save for the death eyes), no marks, no swollen belly, no odd scales.. nothing. It was very bizarre.

All of the other fish seem happy and healthy, including the one remaining cory, who does not appear to have gorged on fish recently... HMMMMM

The tank is 10 gallons, plastic plants, pebble/rock stuff bottom, filtered, heated, cycled, conditioned, etc. Last full tank cleaning was about 3 days ago. I usually go 5-7 days before a 70% water change and bottom swill/siphon. The whole tank gets cleaned every other week. In this tank I also have 1 female betta (who was raised with these cory since she was a tiny little fry), and 3 mickey mouse platy. They all get along fine. I've had all of these fish since april/may

Any clue as to what got my cory cats?!


----------



## BettaMummy87 (Jul 26, 2014)

70% seems a lot of water to be changing at once as a routine change, IMHO. Yes if the need arises (spikes or a random spate of fish deaths) I will change 50-75%, but maybe two w/c a week might be less stressful? Say two 35% changes, 3-4 days apart? That said I doubt that, if this is your established routine, this was the sole cause. 

When you say you do a 'full tank clean' every week and a half, do yoiu mean you take everything out and do a 100% w/c? If so, what do you do with the filter during the change; is the media kept wet? 

What cleaning agents do you use? 

Do you add anything other than dechlorinator to you water? 

The form on the betta section may help here too.  Just answer it for all your fish, and skip the bit about tankmates, as you already listed them


----------



## n25philly (Dec 5, 2013)

Not really sure what happened to your corys, but peppered corys are too big for a 10 gallon. Also 3 is too small of a group of them to be comfortable. Stress was likely a factor.

If you go to restock corys get something like pygmys or habrosus as they are smaller and are proper size for a 10 and will be much happier in a group of 6+. You should be able to do a group of 6 of either kind.

How are the barbels? I just noticed that you have a rock/pebble substrate which is usually not good with corys. They can damage the barbels and if any food ends up in between the rocks the barbels can get infected.


----------



## Nyri (Sep 23, 2014)

Do you have a lid on your tank? Do you have any cats or birds (or other pets that may be interested in fish) that roam your house? I know of someone who was losing fish and it turned out to be a rat taking them. I'm assuming you looked under all of your plants and everything for the missing one? That's a really weird thing to happen, and I hope you can get it solved soon.


----------



## Tress (Jun 6, 2014)

+1 n25philly

Shoaling species get very stressed when there are too few of their species in the tank, and as pointed out this kind are too big for 10gs. They are also very sensitive to water parameters, what are yours? 
http://www.bettafish.com/member.php?u=109234


----------

