little cories

I've let my smaller cories out into the main tank, now. They are still half the size of the juvie one, but now more solid than speckled in the body, and showing blue color on their sides. From the shape of pelvic fins, I think the two smaller ones are male, the larger one is female.

I'm dismayed to see they are reacting badly to water changes, lately. They stop moving, fins clamp, eyes stare motionless and they will drift upwards, as if can't control swim bladder, sometimes roll upside down (head tipping up then over backwards) suddenly right themselves and swim off, only to freeze again. Look very shocky. I don't know why? I add the water more gradually dipping with a cup instead of pouring it straight in fast, which seems better for them, but last time I did it careful like that and still they reacted bad.

My kuhlis and shrimps are unaffected, they dart around excitedly or just chill like normal. Hm. Lately, my shrimps often crowd together. For two days they were all crammed under the sponge cave arch, then I found them all gathered together on top of the heater:

Are they afraid of the fishes now? My striped kuhlis are bolder, out and about more. The female cory is larger, maybe she's been bothering them? I thought perhaps they were all molting and hiding together- but have not seen any shed skins.

I added a few stems of anacharis last week. Bought from a fellow forum member. To my surprise the plants didn't go through a large melt- only the tips of stems that were a bit damaged, disintegrated, overall they look pretty good. There's a few stems in the window tank, and more in the 45 (anchored by a glass bead each).

Also all the subwassertang from the fry box is now across the bottom, which makes the tank overall look quite a bit greener. Dwarf water lettuce up top is slowly recovering from its travels to me in a box. There's new little root hairs growing.

If you look close, there's a little male cory in the middle of the subwasser here: