Corematodus taeniatus "Chemwezi Rocks"
Chemwezi Rocks — chehm-WEH-zee ROKS (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 Corematodus taeniatus account →Specific to Chemwezi Rocks
- 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 Corematodus taeniatus.
The Chemwezi Rocks population
Corematodus taeniatus "Chemwezi Rocks" is the Chemwezi Rocks population of Corematodus taeniatus, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Corematodus taeniatus, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Chemwezi Rocks fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Corematodus taeniatus is one of only two known species in Corematodus, a small genus of Lake Malawi haplochromine cichlids built around an unusual and precise diet: the scales of other fish. Its slender, silvery body is shaped to blend into passing schools of small plankton-feeding cichlids, a disguise it uses to slip in close before rasping scales from a victim's flank with specialised teeth. It shares this scale-eating (lepidophagous) strategy with its congener Corematodus shiranus and, more distantly, with the fin-biting Docimodus of the same lake — part of a small guild of Malawi cichlids that crop tissue from other fish rather than killing them outright.
Full Corematodus taeniatus account →