Altolamprologus compressiceps "Maswa"
Maswa — MAH-swah (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 Maswa
- 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 Maswa population
Altolamprologus compressiceps "Maswa" is the Maswa population of Altolamprologus compressiceps, a geographic colour form from the Tanzania coast of Lake Tanganyika in the north-central 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 Maswa 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 "Maswa"
- 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