Corydoras Bearded / Barbatus
Corydoras Bearded / Barbatus
Currently unavailable
We do not take backorders on live fish, invertebrates or plants. Livestock arrives on the shipping schedule our suppliers and the weather allow, so we will not promise a date we cannot keep.
What is in the tanks changes from week to week. Ask us and we will tell you what is in and what is coming, or check back shortly. Visit us or get in touch.
Free local pickup at our Lethbridge store. Livestock guarantee
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The bearded corydoras (Scleromystax barbatus, long listed as Corydoras barbatus) comes from coastal streams in southeastern Brazil rather than the warm Amazon lowlands, and that single fact shapes everything about keeping it. It is larger and more elongated than a typical cory. Mature males grow bristly odontodes along the cheeks — the beard of the name — and take on a golden-bronze cast, while females stay plainer with bolder dark blotching.
Aquarium care
- Larger than most corydoras, reaching around 9 to 10 cm.
- Subtropical rather than tropical; it does better kept cool than kept warm year-round.
- Wants clean, well-oxygenated water with some current.
- Soft sand substrate, as with any sifting catfish.
- Males display and spar with one another, which is normal and rarely damaging.
- Feed sinking foods; it will not compete well for flake at the surface.
Best suited to a subtropical community with white cloud mountain minnows, danios and other fish that are comfortable at the cooler end of the range. It is a poor match for a warm discus or ram tank, where the temperature that suits them will shorten its life.
Stock rotates with each shipment, and livestock is available for local pickup at our Lethbridge store. See the corydoras collection.