Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Grammatotria lemairii

Grammatotria lemairii "Lyamembe"

Lyamembe — lyah-MEHM-beh (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 Grammatotria lemairii account →

Specific to Lyamembe

  • 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 Grammatotria lemairii.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2025
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size10.2 in26 cm total length
Temperature75–81 °F24–27 °C
pH8.6–9.3alkaline
Depth0–246 ft0–75 m
DietSand-sifting invertivore
BreedingMaternal mouthbrooder~50 young
Sexual dimorphismYesWeak. Males grow somewhat larger and, in spawning condition, show a faint bluish cast and (especially in northern populations) scattered blackish body spots; females stay silvery. Sexes are hard to tell apart outside breeding.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Lyamembe population

Grammatotria lemairii "Lyamembe" is the Lyamembe population of Grammatotria lemairii, a geographic colour form from the Tanzania coast of Lake Tanganyika in the north-central part of the lake. It is the same species as Grammatotria lemairii, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Lyamembe fish at tanganyika.si →

About the species

Grammatotria lemairii, known to fishers on the Tanzanian shore as the nungi, is the largest of Lake Tanganyika's sand-sifting cichlids and the only member of its genus. A silvery, torpedo-shaped fish with a sharply pointed snout, it makes a living the way a few hundred smaller relatives do — by taking mouthfuls of the lakebed, sorting the edible from the inert, and spitting the sand back out — but it does so at a scale none of them can match, driving its snout deeper into the substrate to reach prey the little sifters never touch. Outside the breeding season it gathers into roaming schools over open sand, an unhurried giant in a habitat usually dominated by far smaller cichlids.

Full Grammatotria lemairii account →

Sources

  1. tanganyika.si — Grammatotria lemairii "Lyamembe"
  2. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Grammatotria lemairii (Boulenger, 1899)
  3. FishBase — Grammatotria lemairii (Boulenger, 1899)
  4. IRMNG — Grammatotria Boulenger, 1899
  5. O'Reilly et al. 2003, Climate change decreases aquatic ecosystem productivity of Lake Tanganyika (Nature)
  6. Cohen et al. 2016, Climate warming reduces fish production and benthic habitat in Lake Tanganyika (PNAS)