Fossorochromis rostratus "Thumbi West Island"
Thumbi West Island — TOOM-bee WEST EYE-land (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 Fossorochromis rostratus account →Specific to Thumbi West Island
- 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 Fossorochromis rostratus.
The Thumbi West Island population
Fossorochromis rostratus "Thumbi West Island" is the Thumbi West Island population of Fossorochromis rostratus, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Fossorochromis rostratus, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Thumbi West Island fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Fossorochromis rostratus is the bulldozer of Lake Malawi's sandy shallows: a large, silver-and-spotted haplochromine that feeds by ramming its pointed snout into the substrate, taking a mouthful of sand, and spitting out everything that isn't a midge larva. It is the only member of its genus, endemic to the lake and its outflow, and famous among divers and aquarists alike for a startling party trick — when a net or a predator closes in, it dives headfirst into the sand and vanishes. Hardy and common in the wild, it is nonetheless a fish that asks a great deal of the aquarist who wants to keep it well: room to swim, sand to dig, and tolerance for a male that can turn a six-foot tank into his private kingdom.
Full Fossorochromis rostratus account →Sources
- malawi.si — Fossorochromis rostratus "Thumbi West Island"
- Catalog of Fishes (Eschmeyer) — Tilapia rostrata / Fossorochromis rostratus
- FishBase — Fossorochromis rostratus summary
- GBIF — Fossorochromis rostratus occurrence search
- ITIS — Fossorochromis rostratus (TSN 649019)
- Eccles & Trewavas (1989), Malawian cichlid fishes: classification of some haplochromine genera — cited in Catalog of Fishes (erection of genus Fossorochromis)