Copadichromis cyaneus "Zimbawe Rock"
Zimbawe Rock — zim-BAH-way ROK (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 Copadichromis cyaneus account →Specific to Zimbawe Rock
- 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 Copadichromis cyaneus.
The Zimbawe Rock population
Copadichromis cyaneus "Zimbawe Rock" is the Zimbawe Rock population of Copadichromis cyaneus, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Copadichromis cyaneus, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Zimbawe Rock fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Copadichromis cyaneus is a zooplankton-eating cichlid endemic to Lake Malawi, one of the lake's many "utaka" — the shoaling, open-water haplochromines that hover above the rocks picking drifting copepods from the current. Its name simply means "blue," for the electric cobalt that floods a dominant male, and most hobbyists know it by a single collecting locality, the Zimbabwe Rock form near Likoma Island. It is widespread and listed as Least Concern, yet it lives in exactly the guild that subsistence netting targets, in a lake under mounting strain.
Full Copadichromis cyaneus account →Sources
- malawi.si — Copadichromis cyaneus "Zimbawe Rock"
- Catalog of Fishes (Eschmeyer) — Copadichromis cyaneus
- FishBase — Copadichromis cyaneus summary
- FishBase — Copadichromis cyaneus field guide
- GBIF — Copadichromis cyaneus occurrences
- The ETYFish Project — Cichlidae (Pseudocrenilabrinae) etymology, Copadichromis cyaneus