Cyprichromis pavo "Frontosa Reef"
Frontosa Reef — frohn-TOH-sah REEF (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 Frontosa Reef
- 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 Frontosa Reef population
Cyprichromis pavo "Frontosa Reef" is the Frontosa Reef population of Cyprichromis pavo, a geographic colour form from the Democratic Republic of the Congo coast of Lake Tanganyika in the north-central 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 Frontosa Reef 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 "Frontosa Reef"
- 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