Snail Spirals

The Panda Cory Show is having a very successful Season 2. A month! We made it to a month! The fry are 27 and 10 days old now, and as far as I can tell, I have 15 (maybe 14) of the 18 fry still swimming about. The younger set is still pretty hard to see against the sand, so it was hard to count them, but the four older ones are definitely still alive. I know for sure I lost three of the fry because they had some sort of malformation or injury, and couldn't swim except in frantic spirals. It was kind of a relief when they expired. The rest look good- they're eating and swimming, and seem healthy. I love watching their bellies fill up when they eat.

I took the java fern and rocks out of the tank this afternoon so I could do a thorough cleaning of the sand (food and waste tends to collect behind the rocks, where I can't get at it), and took the opportunity to get a headcount and some pictures.



It's blurry because of my camera's horrible video quality, but you can see the specks of cory fry zooming around. It's so fun watching them nose around in the sand looking for bits of food.

The biggest of the lot is really looking like a fish now, with fins and everything!



He still has a bit of the finfold left, but the unpaired fins that develop from it (dorsal, adipose, anal, and caudal fins) are well developed, as are the paired pectoral and pelvic fins. His body shape has really changed, too. This guy is much deeper-bodied and shorter-tailed, relative to total length.

I tried to get a video of him nosing around in search of morsels in the sand, but this was the best I could get.



You can see how he does the typical cory pattern of "nose nose nose I FOUND SOMETHING chew chew rest rest rest nose nose nose." So very cute.