# Cory behaving weirdly



## defyentropy (Feb 15, 2012)

Last night I posted about one of my cory's tails having gone missing. He didn't make it through the night unfortunately, and now it looks like my peppered cory is in a bad way as well.
I noticed him almost standing on his tail, which I had NEVER seen him do before. He's moving around a bit now, but he keeps going back to that same position on the bottom. He's also got red discoloration around his mouth, no other markings that I've noticed but pretty bad staining.
Help!?!?!

Also in the tank, 2 guppies, 1 albino cory, an algae eater, and a breeder net of guppy fry.

Water parameters according to the test strips:
Amonia: 0
Nitrates: between 0-20
Nitrites: 0
Hardness: around 25
Chrlorine: 0
Alkalinity: 80
pH: around 6.8


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## arch aquatics (Feb 28, 2012)

is the algae eater a SAE?

They often turn carnivore later in life as i learned through losing a discus to one


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## AquariumTech (Oct 12, 2010)

Ok, first off test strips are complete crap, and I would assume the opposite of what any test strip says. Really water testing is not a mastered area in CONSUMER aquatics, so even the best of tests are only going to be 90-99% accurate at best. If you at least get some kind of liquid test you can at least get some sort of estimate. I wont get into this whole rant but I will say, if you ever get better tests, no matter what the quality, the best thing you can do is be consistent (in every part of doing it) and follow the instructions to the "T".

Anyways it sounds like you might have some fish fighting, I have had something similar happen to some corys and couldnt figure it out (assuming it was the water or a disease), so the only conclusion I could come up with is fighting or some sort of accident. Like the guy said above, this could be the case, this is even true with the false sae too.


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## ddawgs3 (May 13, 2010)

You could try to add some salt to the water?


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## AquariumTech (Oct 12, 2010)

ddawgs3 said:


> You could try to add some salt to the water?


Corys hate salt, they are not tolerant to it. Pretty much any fish non-scaled fish, salt is a bad idea for (Corys have armor plating per-say, not scales).


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## ddawgs3 (May 13, 2010)

Thanks i never knew that.


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## Cory (Apr 3, 2012)

Ya. Cut the Salt. The water can also be a problem if has chloramine.


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