The short answer for bronze corydoras
Feed bronze corydoras once or twice a day, always with food that sinks to the substrate, and make at least one of those feedings land after the tank lights dim. A sinking pellet, catfish wafer, or crumbled tablet sized for the group — roughly one small wafer or a few pellets for a shoal of six — is a meal. Flake sprinkled on the surface for other fish does not count as feeding your corydoras, no matter how much of it you put in.
Why bottom feeders get missed at mealtimes
Bronze corydoras spend their day snuffling along the bottom, sifting sand and gravel with their whiskery barbels for worms and scraps. They are gentle, unhurried feeders, and in a community tank the tetras, barbs, or guppies above them strip floating food within minutes. Many cory groups quietly go hungry in well-fed tanks for exactly this reason. They are also naturally more active from dusk onward, so an evening feeding dropped in as the lights go down reaches them when they are out foraging and the midwater rush has settled.
What to feed a bronze cory group
Base the diet on a sinking staple made for catfish, then rotate protein-rich extras: frozen bloodworms, daphnia, and finely chopped earthworm are relished, and a piece of blanched courgette or an algae wafer adds variety they will graze for hours. Drop food in two or three spots along the front of the substrate so the whole shoal finds some without crowding onto one pellet. If your tank has a pushy bottom-dwelling tankmate, feed the corydoras at the far end from its territory. Soft sand is kinder to their barbels than sharp gravel while they dig, and worn or shortened barbels are a sign to check both substrate and water cleanliness.
Judging the portion by the shoal, not the packet
Healthy bronze corydoras look plump and smooth-bellied, especially the larger females, without appearing bloated. Food should be gone within a couple of hours; wafer fragments still sitting there the next morning mean you offered too much, and uneaten sinking food rots invisibly under decor where it does the most harm. Watch individuals as well as the group — in a shoal of six or more, one fish that never comes out to feed, sits clamped on the bottom, or grows thin while the rest stay round needs a closer look and a water test.
When a corydoras stops eating
Loss of appetite in this hardy species usually points at the environment before anything else: check temperature, test for ammonia and nitrite, and look at whether waste has built up in the substrate. A fish that gasps at the surface repeatedly, isolates itself from the shoal, or shows eroded barbels and redness should prompt prompt advice from an aquatic veterinarian or a knowledgeable fish shop, alongside a partial water change with dechlorinated water matched to the tank. Do not simply add extra food to tempt a fish that is unwell — uneaten food will worsen the water it is struggling in.
Making the evening feed somebody's named job
Because the most important cory feeding happens after lights-out, it is the one most easily forgotten or duplicated in a busy household. Naming who drops the wafer each night — and letting everyone else see it was done — keeps this shy shoal fed exactly once. KinsLe's Care Teams fits that pattern neatly: the evening bottom-feed becomes an assigned duty for this tank, and whoever completes it marks it done with a timestamp the rest of the household can check.