Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Aulonocranus dewindti

Aulonocranus dewindti "Izinga Island"

Izinga Island — ee-ZEEN-gah EYE-land (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 Aulonocranus dewindti account →

Specific to Izinga Island

  • 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 Aulonocranus dewindti.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2025
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size5.5 in14 cm total length
Temperature75–79 °F24–26 °C
pH8–9alkaline
Depth3–33 ft1–10 m
DietBenthic invertivore / sand-sifter
BreedingMaternal mouthbrooder; lek (sand-bower) spawnersmall clutch (order of a few dozen large eggs)
Sexual dimorphismYesMales larger, metallic blue-and-yellow with long trailing pelvic and unpaired-fin filaments; females/subdominant males plain silver with short fins.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Izinga Island population

Aulonocranus dewindti "Izinga Island" is the Izinga Island population of Aulonocranus dewindti, a geographic colour form from the Tanzania coast of Lake Tanganyika in the central part of the lake. It is the same species as Aulonocranus dewindti, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Izinga Island fish at tanganyika.si →

About the species

Aulonocranus dewindti is a sand-dwelling featherfin cichlid endemic to Lake Tanganyika, the sole member of its genus and one of the most widespread fishes of the lake's open sandy flats. A big-eyed, somewhat goby-faced sifter, it cruises low over the bottom and reads the sand for buried invertebrates through a face studded with enlarged sensory pores. When it is time to breed, males build and obsessively tidy circular sand craters at a lek — a habit so reliable that biologists have used the fish's housekeeping to probe how a wild cichlid actually makes decisions.

Full Aulonocranus dewindti account →

Sources

  1. tanganyika.si — Aulonocranus dewindti "Izinga Island"
  2. FishBase — Aulonocranus dewindti (Boulenger, 1899)
  3. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Aulonocranus dewindti (species record; original combination Paratilapia dewindti, type locality Moliro, syntypes BMNH/MRAC)
  4. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Aulonocranus Regan 1920 (genus record; type by original designation, monotypic)
  5. GBIF — Aulonocranus dewindti (Boulenger, 1899)
  6. Pirat et al. 2023 — Cognitive flexibility in a Tanganyikan bower-building cichlid, Aulonocranus dewindti (Animal Cognition 26:1959-1971; doi:10.1007/s10071-023-01830-w)