Hoplisoma panda "Snow White"

A panda cory with the pigment turned down. The black eye-mask, dorsal blotch, and tail-spot that give the wild type its name have been selectively bred out, leaving a clean white to pale pink body - sometimes with a faint ghost of the pattern still visible, sometimes not. This is leucism, not albinism, so the eyes stay dark rather than going pink. Same size, same constant fidgeting through the substrate, same easy temperament. Tops out around two inches, females a touch larger than males.

Nijssen and Isbrücker described the wild type in 1971, from specimens pulled out of a cold mountain stream feeding the Río Ucayali in Peru. IUCN lists it Near Threatened, largely on trade-collection pressure - but that assessment covers the wild population, and it stopped having much bearing on the aquarium supply chain decades ago. Virtually every panda cory in the hobby, this morph included, is several generations removed from any wild fish, this line no exception. The genus got reshuffled in 2024 as well: Corydoras panda is now properly Hoplisoma panda, one of 87 species moved into the resurrected genus.

This line didn't come out of this fishroom - it's acquired stock I'm clearing out, not something bred here. One-off, no repeat listing once it's gone.