Chindongo heteropictus "Chizumulu Island"
Chizumulu Island — chee-zoo-MOO-loo 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 Chindongo heteropictus account →Specific to Chizumulu 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 Chindongo heteropictus.
The Chizumulu Island population
Chindongo heteropictus "Chizumulu Island" is the Chizumulu Island population of Chindongo heteropictus, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the central part of the lake. It is the same species as Chindongo heteropictus, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Chizumulu Island fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Maylandia heteropicta — now placed by FishBase in Chindongo as Chindongo heteropictus — is a small, rock-dwelling mbuna known from a single island in Lake Malawi: Chizumulu, an isolated Malawian enclave surrounded by Mozambican waters. Males are a clear sky blue, females a bright lemon yellow, and the contrast between the two is so striking that Wolfgang Staeck named the fish for it when he described it in 1980. It is an aufwuchs grazer of the intermediate habitat zone, where rocky substrate meets sand, and it remains genuinely uncommon in the ornamental trade — a fish that cichlid specialists seek out while most hobbyists have never seen it.
Full Chindongo heteropictus account →Sources
- malawi.si — Chindongo heteropictus "Chizumulu Island"
- FishBase — Chindongo heteropictus (Staeck, 1980) [valid name; synonym Maylandia heteropicta]
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Pseudotropheus heteropictus Staeck 1980; current combination Chindongo heteropictus
- malawi.si — Chindongo heteropictus 'Chizumulu Island' (endemic; Same Bay; intermediate habitat; depths 3–18 m; blue males, yellow females; Ad Konings photos)
- malawi.si — Same Bay, Chizumulu Island (type locality; eastern and western sides; cichlid species list)
- Li, J., Konings, A.F. & Stauffer, J.R. (2016) — 'A Revision of the Pseudotropheus elongatus species group (Teleostei: Cichlidae) With Description of a New Genus and Seven New Species', Zootaxa 4168(2): 353–381 [erects Chindongo; places heteropictus in new genus]