Altolamprologus compressiceps "Kabwe"
Kabwe — KAH-bweh (approx.)
The fish
How this cichlid is built, and everything about how it lives, eats and breeds, is shared with the species — this page doesn't repeat it.
Read the full Altolamprologus compressiceps account →Specific to Kabwe
- Collection locality & coordinates
- Local coloration — best judged from the living-fish photo
- Kept as a single-provenance line, never crossed with other collection points
Care facts below are the species' — shared with Altolamprologus compressiceps.
The Kabwe population
Altolamprologus compressiceps "Kabwe" is the Kabwe population of Altolamprologus compressiceps, a geographic colour form from the Tanzania coast of Lake Tanganyika in the far northern part of the lake. It is the same species as Altolamprologus compressiceps, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Kabwe fish at tanganyika.si →
About the species
Altolamprologus compressiceps is a small, slab-sided predator endemic to Lake Tanganyika, and the razor-thin body that gives it its name is also its main hunting tool. That extreme side-to-side flattening lets it slip edgewise into rock crevices to pluck out shrimp, and it comes armored in unusually tough scales that shrug off the lake's scale-biting cichlids. It is an ambush specialist — slow-growing, patient, and quietly predatory, it holds still and waits rather than chases. Hobbyists have kept a steady following for it, sold in dozens of wild colour forms named for stretches of Tanganyika shoreline, and it rewards a keeper who treats it as the crevice hunter it is.
Full Altolamprologus compressiceps account →Sources
- tanganyika.si — Altolamprologus compressiceps "Kabwe"
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes: Altolamprologus compressiceps (Boulenger 1898)
- FishBase: Altolamprologus compressiceps (Boulenger, 1898)
- GBIF: Altolamprologus compressiceps occurrence records
- Konings, A. — Tanganyika Cichlids in their Natural Habitat (Cichlid Press): Altolamprologus
- Yuma, Narita, Hori & Kondo (1998): Food resources of shrimp-eating cichlid fishes in Lake Tanganyika, Environmental Biology of Fishes 52:371-378