Benthochromis horii "Mahale Mountains NP"
Mahale Mountains NP — mah-HAH-leh moh-oon-TAH-eens NP (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 Benthochromis horii account →Specific to Mahale Mountains NP
- 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 Benthochromis horii.
The Mahale Mountains NP population
Benthochromis horii "Mahale Mountains NP" is the Mahale Mountains NP population of Benthochromis horii, 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 Benthochromis horii, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Mahale Mountains NP fish at tanganyika.si →
About the species
Benthochromis horii is a tall, deep-dwelling cichlid endemic to Lake Tanganyika, a graceful planktivore that drifts in dim water tens of meters down where few aquarium fish ever go. Males are arresting—bluish-violet with three luminous light-blue stripes and trailing pelvic and caudal filaments—while females stay a plain silvery grey. Only described in 2008, it absorbed nearly all the fish the hobby had been calling "Benthochromis tricoti" for decades, and it breeds by an oddly delicate strategy: a clutch of just a handful of eggs carried in the mouth for two months or more.
Full Benthochromis horii account →Sources
- tanganyika.si — Benthochromis horii "Mahale Mountains NP"
- Catalog of Fishes (Eschmeyer) — Benthochromis horii
- FishBase — Benthochromis horii summary
- FishBase — Benthochromis horii field guide (size, environment)
- Takahashi, T. (2008). Description of a new cichlid fish species of the genus Benthochromis from Lake Tanganyika. J. Fish Biol. 72(3):603–613
- The taxonomic diversity of the cichlid fish fauna of Lake Tanganyika (ScienceDirect)