Cyprichromis pavo "Cape Nangu"
Cape Nangu — KAYP NAHN-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 Cyprichromis pavo account →Specific to Cape Nangu
- 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 Cyprichromis pavo.
The Cape Nangu population
Cyprichromis pavo "Cape Nangu" is the Cape Nangu population of Cyprichromis pavo, a geographic colour form from the Zambia coast of Lake Tanganyika in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Cyprichromis pavo, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Cape Nangu fish at tanganyika.si →
About the species
Cyprichromis pavo is a slender, open-water cichlid found only in the southern half of Lake Tanganyika, where it drifts in vast plankton-feeding schools over deep rocky slopes. Its name is Latin for peacock, a nod to the polychromatic males whose iridescence shifts between blue and yellow from one fish to the next. What sets it apart from its sardine-like relatives is the way it breeds: rather than holding a patch of open water, the male courts females against an almost vertical rock face, an unusual habit for a genus better known for spawning in midwater.
Full Cyprichromis pavo account →Sources
- tanganyika.si — Cyprichromis pavo "Cape Nangu"
- Cyprichromis pavo — FishBase species summary
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes (Cyprichromis pavo, genus/species records)
- GBIF — Cyprichromis pavo Büscher, 1994
- Takahashi & Hori (2006), Description of a new Lake Tanganyikan cichlid of the genus Cyprichromis, with a note on sexual dimorphism — Journal of Fish Biology 68(Suppl. B):174–192
- O'Reilly et al. (2003), Climate change decreases aquatic ecosystem productivity of Lake Tanganyika — Nature 424:766–768