Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Copadichromis virginalis

Copadichromis virginalis "Cape Kaiser"

Cape Kaiser — KAYP KY-zer (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 virginalis account →

Specific to Cape Kaiser

  • 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 virginalis.

IUCNNEAR THREATENED · 2019
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size5.2 in13.2 cm total length
Temperature75–82 °F24–28 °C
pH7.7–8.8alkaline
Depth59–374 ft18–114 m
DietOpen-water zooplankton picker
BreedingMaternal mouthbrooder; male builds a crater bower in soft substrate beneath an overhanging rock~30–60 eggs (utaka-typical; not separately documented for this species, by analogy to the open-water utaka C. chrysonotus, which averages ~50 eggs/brood)
Sexual dimorphismYesBreeding males dark grey with a vivid head-to-tail dorsal 'blaze' (yellow at Nkhata Bay, pale blue elsewhere) and a yellow dorsal fin with a black basal stripe; females and non-breeders plain silvery and spotless ('pure utaka').
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Cape Kaiser population

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

Colour reference: living Cape Kaiser fish at malawi.si →

About the species

Copadichromis virginalis is a silvery, zooplankton-feeding cichlid of Lake Malawi, one of the "utaka" that shoal in open water and pick drifting plankton from the current with a remarkably protrusible mouth. It is a "pure utaka" — lacking the dark flank spots of its relatives — and a genuine commercial food fish, common enough to dominate trawl catches yet listed as Near Threatened because that very fishery has thinned it. Its taxonomy has been muddled since 1960, and a 2022 whole-genome study finally pried it apart from its long-confused look-alike, Copadichromis mloto.

Full Copadichromis virginalis account →

Sources

  1. malawi.si — Copadichromis virginalis "Cape Kaiser"
  2. Copadichromis virginalis, Lake Malawi utaka — FishBase
  3. Catalog of Fishes — Copadichromis virginalis (Iles, 1960)
  4. GBIF — Haplochromis virginalis Iles, 1960 (Backbone Taxonomy)
  5. Turner, Crampton, Rusuwa, Hooft van Huysduynen & Svardal (2022) — Taxonomic investigation of the zooplanktivorous Lake Malawi cichlids Copadichromis mloto and C. virginalis (Hydrobiologia)
  6. Iles, T.D. (1960) — A group of zooplankton feeders of the genus Haplochromis (Cichlidae) in Lake Nyasa (Annals and Magazine of Natural History; original description)