Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Cynotilapia zebroides

Cynotilapia zebroides "Chiofu"

Chiofu — chee-OH-foo (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 Cynotilapia zebroides account →

Specific to Chiofu

  • 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 Cynotilapia zebroides.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2018
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size3.7 in9.3 cm standard length
Temperature75–82 °F24–28 °C
pH7.7–8.6alkaline
Depth0–66 ft0–20 m
DietZooplankton picker + aufwuchs grazer
BreedingMaternal mouthbrooder (cave-associated)small (~10-30 eggs; small-mbuna typical, not separately published)
Sexual dimorphismYesDominant males light blue with strong dark vertical bars into the dorsal; females and subordinate males drab beige to grey-blue, never crisply barred.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Chiofu population

Cynotilapia zebroides "Chiofu" is the Chiofu population of Cynotilapia zebroides, 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 Cynotilapia zebroides, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Chiofu fish at malawi.si →

About the species

Cynotilapia zebroides is a small, slender, blue-and-black barred rock-dwelling cichlid (a "mbuna") endemic to Africa's Lake Malawi, described by Donald Johnson in 1975. It has been shuffled through several genera over the years — variously placed in Microchromis, Maylandia, Metriaclima, and Pseudotropheus — and most current taxonomists now file it under Cynotilapia, the change driven by its mouthful of slender, single-pointed teeth and its habit of suction-feeding on plankton out in the water column rather than scraping algae off rocks. It looks deceptively like the ubiquitous zebra mbuna of the Maylandia/Metriaclima complex, and that resemblance — combined with an aggressive, fin- and scale-nipping streak and a readiness to hybridize with those fish — is the single most important thing a keeper needs to know about it.

Full Cynotilapia zebroides account →

Sources

  1. malawi.si — Cynotilapia zebroides "Chiofu"
  2. FishBase — Cynotilapia zebroides (Johnson, 1975)
  3. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Cynotilapia zebroides (species record)
  4. GBIF — Microchromis zebroides (Johnson, 1975) [backbone synonym of Cynotilapia zebroides]
  5. malawi.si (M.K. Oliver / Ad Konings) — Cynotilapia zebroides 'Jalo Reef'
  6. malawi.si — Cynotilapia zebroides species index (variants; afra misidentification)