in my previous video my daughter Gamer Girl said that she wanted some false julii corys and we had
no problems you know my local fish store happened to be keeping some we went in they all looked very
active and healthy they had had them for three weeks so we took a school of six of them home
and I had set up a 10 gallon quarantine tank put in the Quarantine Medication Trio and that was
that right well for the first few days I noticed that the false julii corys were all huddled in a
corner often hiding behind the sponge filter I thought maybe this is a shy species than I
thought I don't know I've never kept this fish before but by day three got our first cory death
this happens in quarantine so I went ahead and tested the water it's a quarantine tank I hadn't
been feeding them any food because they were being treated with the Quarantine Med Trio so it
was like zero across the board for nitrogen waste zero ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate okay day four
another Cory death wow this is not looking good however I guess the positive side was that some
of the corys were now starting to be a little more active they weren't always huddled in the
corner and then by day five they were all active and looking for food and acting like everything
was normal after thinking about it for a while I believe what they were experiencing was corridor's
self-poisoning and this is because when I bought them from the fish store they came in the fish
bag like all six of them and I put them inside of the Aquarium Co-op insulated bag and I went
out to dinner with my family and you know they were hanging inside the restaurant on my chair
and then after we finished dinner I took them home and then I put them in the quarantine tank
now what is corydoras self-poisoning basically if you've noticed um corys have this like pectoral
spine that sticks out from the side and they can release a toxin from kind of the armpit area like
where the pictorial spine meets the body of the cory and the reason why they do that is because
in the wild you know a predator might let's say bite them or eat the cory, the cory's spine would
stick into the side of its mouth it releases the poison and that goes into the predator's mouth
or the wound and then the Predator lets the cory go and then because they're in a big river system
that toxin gets swept out the river no problems with the cory right it's a self-defense mechanism
well in captivity when we have them inside of a fish bag and let's say they get shipped to you
or in my case I take them home from the fish store and when they are stressed they will release this
poison and the poison has nowhere to go and so I'm taking a lot of this information from Dr Eric
Thomas he has an excellent talk over here that's unfortunately it's a Members Only video from
Aquarium Co-Op if you're willing to spend five dollars you can see his talk as well as many many
other Talks by lots of cool experts on all sorts of different topics anyways what he said is a lot
of times let's say they're in the fish bag or even a small tank if the poison is released the water
will kind of look whitish cloudy if it's the small tank and you have like you know a Sponge Filter
going you may see foaming at the top of the water that's often a sign that chemically something's
going on with the water the corys will start to swim funny lie on their side have a lot of trouble
breathing or gasping and then death can occur in as little as one to two minutes now in my case
I think what happened was again I think they had mild poisoning in the bag not enough to cause the
instant one to two minute death but mild poisoning in the bag and then when I brought them home
remember how they were all huddled I think all of them were experiencing like basically toxic Burns
on their gills and other parts of their body and then two of them didn't make it however the four
of them ended up Surviving and then they were able to swim and eat and now they're doing well
upstairs in the 15 gallon cube in my daughter's tank so how do we prevent self-poisoning
Dr Thomas was mostly talking to people who would be shipping their corys and so he recommended
before you put them in the shipping bag to actually put them maybe in a catch cup or specimen
container with some aquarium water so stress them out by kind of shaking the container a little bit
they will release that toxin quickly dump out the water and then give them fresh water inside
of the fish bag and so most likely they will have expelled all that poison and there will be no more
left for them to re-poison the bag until they make more other things you can do would be put
fewer corys per fish bag maybe even like one per fish bag if you're afraid of that happening you
can use maybe opaque bags so that they can't see outside of the bag and get really stressed out by
what they see as well as maybe adding like a cut off a small chunk of like activated carbon sponge
or maybe Poly-Filter which is known to absorb toxins and other impurities in the water if
you're like me and you're buying the corys I would definitely recommend that you take them home right
away no dilly dallying you know no going to eat at a restaurant first if you are driving a long
distance maybe the local fish or Isn't So local and you're having to drive a long ways consider
maybe having like a few you know a couple buckets of water so maybe the corys are in a bucket of
water and then it's a larger volume than a fish bag so then if they poison the water then it
will be a little more diluted and then maybe part way through the trip shift them over net them out
and put them in another bucket which with fresh water and so that way they're they won't poison
that water so that might be something to think about. As for how to treat the corys after they've
self-poisoned themselves Dr Thomas didn't have a lot of recommendations he said you know just
give them lots of fresh water a lot of aeration as well just kind of hope for the best unfortunately
I mean for me you know I put them in a brand new quarantine tank it's 10 gallons of fresh water
it was a Sponge Filter going lots of aeration and I did dump out all of the water that was
in a bag so I think again that's why two of them died succumbed a few days later from the wounds
and then the rest of them ended up recovering thankfully now you would think that would be
the end of my troubles right but now we only have four false julii corys so I figured that school
was a little bit too small so we went back to the fish store got three more which were significantly
larger in size than our first batch as well as two regular pristella tetras that are silver
colored and this time I put them straight into the quarantine tank right but I did notice that
um when the employee was catching them one of the Cory's pectoral spines got caught in the net and
he kind of had to like shake it to get it into the bag and that ended up damaging that pectoral
fin so when I came home I saw that one of the corys like his little pectoral spine had a puff
of fungus at the end of it as well as like in the armpit area it was very red on the body and looked
like infection was starting to set in so since I've had really good luck with using aquarium salt
to treat fungus I decided to follow the guidelines for how to use aquarium salt as medication and
I used level one which is like the mildest concentration you know it's compared to often
like Neosporin it's a antibacterial ointment right not very strong and that level is one tablespoon
of salt for every three gallons of water and I figured you know we'll start really low and we'll
see what happens and then I was like oh I forgot I also need to add the Quarantine Med Trio well by
day two that cory that had been injured ended up dying and I was like oh gosh maybe his he had some
internal injuries that were worse than I thought however three days later another false julii cory
was having like buoyancy issues and then started laying down and it passed away as well same thing
I tested the water no traces of nitrogen because I just done a big water change before adding them
in what is going on so my hypothesis is it's got to be something with the salt because when I've
treated those false julii corys you know I ended up having to get more after that because they
kept dying on me right and so when I treated them with just the Quarantine Medication Trio
no problems at all so it's either the salt or maybe the combination of salt interacting with
the Quarantine Med Trio I'm not exactly sure Bob from Steenfott Aquatics actually has a video on
treating corydoras with salt he goes into all the details about how they have scutes instead
of scales so they're not really scaleless fish but he uses a concentration of one or two tablespoons
of salt per 10 gallons and then he only treats it for about 24 to 48 hours versus I had about three
and a third tablespoons of salt for 10 gallons and I had it in there for five days before I
realized "oh wow the second cory died I'm gonna do a massive water change and try to get as much salt
out as possible" and as soon as they did the water change none of the other corys ended up dying so
take that as you will so yeah who knew I was going to learn so much from the kid's tank in terms of
take corys home as soon as possible make sure to be careful when dosing salt the final count in
that tank is eight pristella tetras two of each color purple green yellow and now the regular
silver we've got snowy the mystery snail as well as final count Seven false julii corys have made
it through quarantine and are now healthy and eating and doing fantastic make sure to stay tuned
to our next video when I'm going to teach you (and Gamer Girl) how we feed the fish as well as clean
them on a regular basis take time to enjoy your aquariums and I'll see in the next video [Music]