Corydoras Catfish

🌍 Overview

Corydoras catfish are small, armored, bottom-dwelling fish native to the rivers and streams of South America. They are obligate shoaling fish, meaning they need the company of their own species to feel secure and behave naturally, and they spend much of the day actively foraging through soft substrate with sensitive barbels around their mouth. A unique adaptation lets them gulp air at the surface and absorb oxygen through their intestine, a backup system for the low-oxygen waters they evolved in.

📋 Quick Facts

📜 History

Theodore Gill described the bronze cory in 1858 from a single Trinidad specimen, calling it Hoplosoma aeneum, and it spent most of the following century and a half filed under the catch-all genus Corydoras with hundreds of relatives. In June 2024 a Brazilian-led team published a phylogenomic revision in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society that broke the subfamily Corydoradinae into seven genera, resurrecting names including Hoplisoma, Brochis and Osteogaster, and the bronze cory moved to Osteogaster. Even that is provisional, since the fish is now treated as a species complex awaiting further review. Commercial breeding in the United States, Europe and Singapore supplies almost every one sold.

🧠 Test Yourself