Collection point · Lake Tanganyika · Zambia

Chituta Bay

chee-TOO-tah BAY (approx.)

The atlas records 49 collection-point forms from Chituta Bay, across 26 genera.

8.7200°S 31.1500°E

Chituta Bay lies just east of Mpulungu at Lake Tanganyika's southern tip — a rocky Zambian bay famous in the hobby for its open-water Cyprichromis schools and rock-dwelling lamprologines.

Where it is

Chituta Bay is at the southern end of Lake Tanganyika, 373 mi south of the lake's northern tip.

Nearest collection points: Kasenga 0.6 mi north-west · Wonzye Point 1.1 mi west · Chikonde 1.9 mi west

Shore, third and distances are measured from the coordinates above against the lake’s mapped outline.

The water

Lake-wide measured chemistry of Lake Tanganyika — collection points share their lake's water; site-specific figures are shown only where the literature records them.

Temperature77–80.6 °F25–27 °C

pH8.6–9.2alkaline

Hardnesshard · 600–690 µS/cm

Nearest measured station: Mpulungu (south basin) (~6 km) — Temperature 24.5 °C · pH 8.9 · Conductivity 662 µS/cm · Visibility (Secchi) 11.9 m

This site

Habitatrockyrocky bay east of Mpulungu at the lake's southern tip

Surface temperature here

Across Mar–Nov, monthly means run 76 °F to 82 °F — coolest in Jul. Measured by satellite 1995–2023: the daily median of clear readings within 10 km of the site (1818 clear days). The rainy-season months are usually too cloudy to measure and are left blank.

Surface temperature by month near Chituta Bay — dot = mean, bar = typical range (10th–90th percentile), “–” = too cloudy to measure.

Temperature: ESA Climate Change Initiative, Lakes_cci v3.0 (Asfour et al. 2026; doi:10.5285/a56dba09df8a42ec9fba8b8c7a5e1f69). Chemistry on this page remains the lake's own.

The site

The bay's rocky shores and steep underwater profile hold a classic southern-Tanganyika community: schooling Cyprichromis over the rocks, Altolamprologus and other lamprologines in the crevices below. Its position close to the port of Mpulungu made it one of the earliest and most consistently fished collection points in the ornamental trade, and 'Chituta' remains a standard provenance label across many genera.

Sources

Konings, A. (2019). Tanganyika Cichlids in their Natural Habitat, 4th Edition. Cichlid Press, El Paso.

Each entry below is the population of that species recorded here — the form aquarists keep and breed as a distinct, provenance-labelled line. Crossing forms from different collection points is considered hybridisation in the hobby.