Corematodus taeniatus "Narungu"
Narungu — nah-ROON-goo (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 Narungu
- 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 Narungu population
Corematodus taeniatus "Narungu" is the Narungu population of Corematodus taeniatus, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the south-central 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 Narungu 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 →