Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Aulonocranus dewindti

Aulonocranus dewindti "Kalya"

Kalya — KAH-lyah (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 Kalya

  • 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 Kalya population

Aulonocranus dewindti "Kalya" is the Kalya population of Aulonocranus dewindti, 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 Aulonocranus dewindti, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Kalya 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 "Kalya"
  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)