Taxonomy & naming
Bond's cory was described by William A. Gosline in 1940, in his revision of the neotropical catfishes of the family Callichthyidae, from the Río Yuruari about three kilometres east of El Callao in Bolívar State, Venezuela — still the type locality (holotype CAS-SU 35065). The species epithet honours Dr Franklyn F. Bond. Gosline's own description sketched the pattern that still defines the fish: a yellowish ground colour, a central dark stripe bordered on each side by an unpigmented band and then by the brown spotting of the flank — a 'trilineate' arrangement of three bands each about an eye-width wide, with the central stripe running from about the fourth scute back to the tail and intensifying toward the rear.
Like almost all 'cory cats' it was placed in the vast genus Corydoras Lacépède, 1803 (family Callichthyidae) and traded as Corydoras bondi. That genus, well over 170 species, proved not to be a single natural group, and in 2024 Dias, Tencatt and colleagues published a phylogenetic revision of the Corydoradinae (DOI 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlae053) that split it into several genera — Brochis, Hoplisoma, Gastrodermus, Osteogaster and others. Under that scheme Bond's cory becomes Hoplisoma bondi, the combination now used by Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes and FishBase. The change is recent and the hobby still says 'Corydoras bondi', so we keep that as the display heading while recording the current combination honestly. A taxonomic footnote: a former subspecies, C. bondi coppenamensis, was long since raised to full species (C. coppenamensis), and the two — together with C. sipaliwini — remain easily and frequently confused.
Morphology
Bond's cory is a small, comparatively slim, somewhat high-backed cory; FishBase records a maximum of about 2 in standard length, and Seriously Fish gives 2 in. It has the standard Corydoras build — two rows of overlapping bony scutes down each flank, a hard helmeted head, three pairs of barbels around the downturned mouth, and stiff, locking spines in the dorsal, pectoral and adipose fins.
Its colour is restrained. The ground is yellowish to greyish, and the diagnostic feature is the trilineate midline: a dark central stripe flanked by two pale, unpigmented bands and then by scattered brown spotting over the rest of the body, with the stripe deepening toward the caudal peduncle. The head is darker than the body with rather vague markings, the fins are largely unmarked except for a dark blotch on the leading dorsal-fin rays, and some specimens show faint spotting on the central caudal rays. The reliable separators from its look-alikes are subtle: in C. sipaliwini the body spots are larger, the dorsal blotch more prominent and the caudal carries rows of dark spots, while in C. coppenamensis the base colour is more orange and the dark dorsolateral spots more distinct.
Habitat
Corydoras bondi is a fish of the Guiana Shield, the ancient geological formation underlying much of Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname. Its type locality is the Río Yuruari near El Callao in eastern Venezuela; the Yuruari is an affluent of the Río Cuyuni, which drains east into the Essequibo system rather than into the Orinoco proper. The species is also recorded from the Rupununi River in Guyana — another Essequibo tributary — and from the Courantyne/Corantijn system on the Guyana–Suriname border, giving it a range spread across the Yuruari, Corantijn and Rupununi basins of all three countries.
Detailed water data for its specific localities are thin in the literature, but these Guiana Shield streams are typically warm, soft-to-moderate, slightly acidic to neutral waters over sand and leaf litter. The hobby keeps the species across a broad envelope — roughly 68–79 °F and pH about 6.0–7.5 — consistent with the lowland forest streams of the region. Like all corys it is a facultative air-breather, surfacing to gulp air and take up oxygen through a modified, vascularised hindgut that helps it survive in warm, low-oxygen water.
Feeding
Bond's cory is a benthic foraging omnivore, like the rest of its genus. In the wild it works sand and leaf litter, sifting the substrate with its barbels to take small invertebrates, insect larvae, micro-crustaceans, worms and organic detritus, and venting cleaned sand through the gills. In the aquarium it accepts most sinking dried foods readily and relishes small live and frozen items such as bloodworm, Tubifex and Daphnia; a varied diet keeps it in good condition. As with any cory it should never be left to subsist on the leftovers of larger tankmates or treated as a substrate 'cleaner' — it needs its own food delivered to the bottom.
Mating
Like all Corydoras, Bond's cory is an egg-laying shoaler with no pair bond and the genus's characteristic 'T-position' courtship. When a female is ready she cleans a surface and the group becomes active; a male positions himself at right angles to her head in the classic T, and she appears to take his milt into her mouth, after which sperm is thought to pass quickly through her gut to fertilise the few eggs held in a basket formed by her pelvic fins. She presses those eggs onto a chosen surface and the sequence repeats a few eggs at a time. FishBase notes the female holds only two to four eggs between her pelvic fins per pass, which the male fertilises — a small-batch pattern typical of the genus. Detailed published accounts of breeding this particular species are scarce.
Breeding
Bond's cory can in principle be bred like other small Corydoras, but documented hobbyist spawning reports for it are uncommon — in part because so much of the fish in trade under this name is actually C. coppenamensis or C. sipaliwini, which muddies the record. The general method is the one that works across the genus: condition a group skewed toward males on rich live and frozen foods, then trigger spawning with a large, cooler water change that simulates the rains, with raised oxygenation and flow. The female deposits a small number of adhesive eggs at a time onto cleaned surfaces or fine-leaved plants. There is no parental care and adults will eat the eggs, so breeders remove either the eggs or the parents, often with methylene blue or alder cones to deter fungus; eggs of comparable corys hatch in roughly three to five days and the fry take microworm and Artemia nauplii once their yolk sacs are absorbed. We flag honestly that species-specific breeding data for C. bondi remain limited.
In the aquarium
Bond's cory is a peaceful, gregarious community fish that should be kept in a group of at least six (four to six is the usual minimum quoted); footprint matters more than height, and a tank giving plenty of clear bottom area suits a shoal. Substrate is the key husbandry point: provide soft sand or very smooth, rounded fine gravel kept scrupulously clean, because corys feed by sifting and coarse or dirty substrate wears down and infects their barbels. Add some cover — driftwood, leaf litter, planting — for security, and use gentle, well-oxygenated filtration.
Keep the water warm but not hot (about 68–79 °F), soft to moderately hard and around neutral, with regular changes. It mixes well with small characins, rasboras, dwarf cichlids and other calm community fish, and should not be housed with anything large enough to bully it. The familiar cory cautions apply: the stiff fin spines can pierce skin and tangle in nets (a cup is safer than a net), and a badly stressed cory can release a skin toxin that, in the small volume of a transport bag, can poison the whole group — so move them carefully. The single biggest practical issue with this species, though, is identity: buyers wanting true C. bondi should be aware that most 'bondi' on sale are its look-alike relatives.
Conservation
Corydoras bondi is assessed by the IUCN as Least Concern (assessment dated 23 September 2020). It is distributed across several river systems in three countries on the relatively sparsely populated Guiana Shield, with no evidence of significant decline, and collection for the aquarium trade is light — particularly since most 'bondi' in shops are in fact other species. The broad pressures on northern South American freshwaters apply here too: gold mining (the El Callao district around the type locality is a long-established gold-mining area), deforestation, siltation and pollution can degrade the shield's clear forest streams. The persistent confusion with C. coppenamensis and C. sipaliwini also means field records attributed to 'bondi' should be read with some caution when judging its true range and abundance.