Taxonomy & naming
Holly described the species as Corydoras schultzei in 1940 from aquarium specimens said to come from very small watercourses of the Amazon. The syntypes, held by the Munich zoo company that supplied them, were lost in the Second World War. Nijssen and Isbrücker treated the name as a synonym of Corydoras aeneus in 1980, and later revisions followed them. Tencatt and colleagues suggested in 2023 that it may be a valid species, and the Catalog of Fishes now lists it as uncertain, in the bronze-cory lineage genus Osteogaster.
Morphology
No modern redescription exists, and with the type material lost the name cannot be tied to a preserved specimen. Fish sold as Corydoras schultzei are bronze-cory types; how they differ from Osteogaster aenea has not been set out in the literature the atlas uses.
Habitat
The original description gives only small watercourses of the Amazon basin. The Catalog of Fishes places it, if valid, in the lower Amazon basin of Brazil.
Feeding
Not described for this name. Bronze-group corydoras sift soft substrate for small invertebrates and organic matter.
Mating
Not described for this name.
Breeding
Not described for this name. Bronze-group corydoras spawn in the typical corydoradine way, the female carrying eggs between her pelvic fins and pressing them onto surfaces.
In the aquarium
Keep it as you would a bronze corydoras: a group on a fine sand bottom in clean, well-oxygenated water at tropical temperatures. Because the name is uncertain, keep fish bought as schultzei apart from bronze corydoras when breeding, so that any real difference is not lost.
Conservation
The name has not been assessed by the IUCN. The bronze corydoras it was long merged with is assessed as Least Concern.