Hi all,
I'd consider a good sized group (10) of Panda cories. They stay small.
I like Panda Cories as well, easy to keep, easy to breed (you get fry surviving with the adults) and attractive.
Oh I also considered pygmy cories of some sort instead of the sterba's but I read that they spend a lot of time up in the water column which I don't want
Corydoras habrosus acts just like a bigger
Corydoras. Mine have never spawned, but other than that they have been very low maintenance.
I think happy
Corydoras pygmaeus are a bit like
Otocinclus, that they only swim around all the time in a big shoal when they aren't happy (I know that
Otocinclus are much more active in the evening).
I've got a few
Corydoras pygmaeus left (they've bred over several generations, but I've ended up with all males, possibly because the female were bigger and I took the bigger fry to the LFS), and they've always mainly perched on a rock or flat leaf with occasional "group" swims. If I want them active I just add a few micro-worms, which will keep them actively swimming until there all gone.
When I still had females, you would get more obvious mating activity with gravid females swimming up and down the glass etc with several males in tow.
Corydoras hastatus is slightly different, I've still got a breeding colony of these, and they spend most of their time in the plants and leaf litter, they are quite active, but they very rarely swim in open areas. I see them more frequently at the moment, which may mean there are more of them, but at one point I was down to 3 specimens, and I didn't see them at all for ~12 months and I'd assumed that they had died.
cheers Darrel