Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Copadichromis sp. "Virginalis Chitande"

Copadichromis sp. "Virginalis Chitande" "Chitande Island"

Chitande Island — chee-TAHN-deh 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 Copadichromis sp. "Virginalis Chitande" account →

Specific to Chitande 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 Copadichromis sp. "Virginalis Chitande".

CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size4.5 in12 cm total length
Temperature75–82 °F24–28 °C
pH7.7–8.6alkaline
Depth16–98 ft5–30 m
DietPresumed open-water zooplanktivore, picking copepods and other microcrustaceans from the water column, per genus pattern; no population-specific dietary study has been published.
Breedingmaternal mouthbroodernot documented; genus-typical for small Copadichromis is a few dozen eggs
Sexual dimorphismYesBreeding males are dark blue with a light-blue flare on the head and dorsal fin. Females are plain silvery and unspotted, most often seen at the deeper end of the population's range (around 25 m).
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Chitande Island population

Copadichromis sp. "Virginalis Chitande" "Chitande Island" is the Chitande Island population of Copadichromis sp. "Virginalis Chitande", a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the far northern part of the lake. It is the same species as Copadichromis sp. "Virginalis Chitande", distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Chitande Island fish at malawi.si →

About the species

Copadichromis sp. "Virginalis Chitande" is a small, undescribed utaka recorded from Chitande Island in Lake Malawi, first noted by Ad Konings in November 1990 as a population of Virginalis-like cichlids spread across an unusually wide depth range. It sits inside one of the lake's most tangled taxonomic problems: the loose cluster of similar, spotless "pure utaka" populations built around Copadichromis virginalis, several of which — "Fire-Crest Mloto", "Virginalis Gome", and this Chitande population among them — have never been cleanly sorted to species. Its body proportions look like C. virginalis, but its colour pattern and depth range do not match its closest-studied relatives, and Konings himself left it formally unassigned.

Full Copadichromis sp. "Virginalis Chitande" account →

Sources

  1. malawi.si — Copadichromis sp. "Virginalis Chitande" "Chitande Island"
  2. malawi.si — Copadichromis (Konings-based species database; Malawi genus overview)
  3. Konings, A. — Cichlids Yearbook, Volume 1 (Cichlid Press; Copadichromis sp. "Virginalis Chitande", Chitande Island)
  4. Turner, Crampton, Rusuwa, Hooft van Huysduynen & Svardal (2022) — Taxonomic investigation of the zooplanktivorous Lake Malawi cichlids Copadichromis mloto and C. virginalis (Hydrobiologia)
  5. Cichlid Room Companion — Copadichromis genus profile (utaka, plankton-feeders)