The new fish haven't been in their new home for very long, but it seems the catfish have already made some important decisions.
I didn't know much about catfish (well, corydoras, specifically) until about a year or so ago when the pepper corys I had at the time decided that laying eggs on the walls of their aquarium was a great idea, and shocked the heck out of me. I'd never seen corys mate before, so I went straight into research mode.
From what I could find out, it's really quite difficult to encourage corys to mate. They're not as promiscuous as guppies - there are comments I could make about that but I'll refrain from doing so - and will only think about mating if the conditions are right. Also, of course, you need to have a male and a female who get along; I think I've mentioned before that determining the gender of catfish is not easy?
I'd only ever had two corys at a time until a few years ago when I ended up with four, then three (one became ill and never recovered). As it turned out, there was one female and two males. The female and one of the males got along really well... and eggs started showing up on the glass. Unknowingly I'd somehow set up just the right conditions for cory love; unfortunately it didn't last long. A couple months ago the male died, I suppose from old age - he would have been at least four years old - and the female passed not long after. In my research I came across a surprising fact: corys mate for life. I'm serious. They pick a partner and that's it. So I wasn't shocked when the female died shortly after her mate.
Now, back to the present. I have four catfish; I was hoping that maybe I might end up with a mix of males and females again, and after some careful observation, I think that happened. My best guess: it's equal - two males, two females... and they've already picked their partners. Caesar and Aurelia are nearly inseparable, while Julius and Augusta are never very far from each other, though not quite as close as the other two. It is behaviour I observed between my pepper corys when the eggs started showing up; the odd thing is, these corys are still quite young. My other ones were at least two years old when the eggs appeared, and I'm fairly certain these four are less than a year old right now.
Who knows? Perhaps, if the conditions are right, corys pick their mates early, but wait longer before anything happens? From my research there seems to be a lot of things we don't really know about corys and their behaviour; they don't seem to be a very popular fish to study. I'll be keeping a close eye on my four, and whatever happens I'll report it here!
