Panda cory catfish: care, tank size, and cool water range

Panda corys do best in a 20 gallon long with six or more of their own kind, a floor of fine sand, and water held between 20 and 26°C. That last number is the one most care pages bury: it runs cooler than a typical tropical community tank, and it decides whether you buy a heater at all.

Adults reach about 5 cm and spend the day sifting substrate in a loose, rolling group.

The cool water range changes your heater plan

Standard species profiles put panda corys at 20 to 26°C. A heated betta tank sits at 26 to 27°C, which is the ceiling of that range rather than the middle. Keeping pandas there permanently runs their metabolism hot, and freshly imported fish are usually the first to fade in those tanks.

A room that holds 21°C across winter needs no heater for this species. Breeders go further and drop the temperature with cool water changes to trigger spawning, which tells you how far cool water is from a problem for them.

Soft, tannin-stained water with leaf litter is their comfort zone, and our blackwater aquarium setup guide covers building one step by step.

Video: Fish Shop Matt

Numbers worth planning around

Figures below come from standard species references. Treat the footprint as the hard constraint, because pandas patrol the floor rather than the water column.

Bioload is the part owners misread

Six fish sifting sand all day gets read as a cleanup crew. They still need food aimed at the floor: new shipments arrive lean, and pandas fed on leftovers alone go thin over a season.

Target the feeding. Sinking wafers or frozen bloodworms two or three evenings a week, dropped where the current carries them down, covers it.

Fragile imports, sharp gravel

Two failure points account for most panda cory losses. Newly imported fish carry stress and parasites from crowded shipping, so a quarantine tank for three weeks beats medicating your display. Coarse gravel erodes their barbels over months, and fine sand fixes that for good.

Floor space matters more than rated volume here. Several tanks sold as nano picks run 30 cm of frontage, and a 76 cm minimum rules them out; our nano tanks for aquascaping roundup flags the footprints that actually work.