Greenwoodochromis bellcrossi "Chituta"
Chituta — chee-TOO-tah (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 Greenwoodochromis bellcrossi account →Specific to Chituta
- 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 Greenwoodochromis bellcrossi.
The Chituta population
Greenwoodochromis bellcrossi "Chituta" is the Chituta population of Greenwoodochromis bellcrossi, a geographic colour form from the Zambia coast of Lake Tanganyika in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Greenwoodochromis bellcrossi, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Chituta fish at tanganyika.si →
About the species
Greenwoodochromis bellcrossi is a rarely seen, deep-water cichlid endemic to the southern end of Lake Tanganyika, where it haunts the dim transition between open water and the lake floor. Described by Max Poll in 1976, it has bounced through three genera and remains one of the lake's more enigmatic species. Its most striking trait is biparental mouthbrooding — both parents share the work of carrying eggs and fry in their mouths, a strategy unusual among Tanganyika's largely maternal mouthbrooders.
Full Greenwoodochromis bellcrossi account →Sources
- tanganyika.si — Greenwoodochromis bellcrossi "Chituta"
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Greenwoodochromis bellcrossi (species record)
- FishBase — Greenwoodochromis bellcrossi summary
- GBIF — Greenwoodochromis bellcrossi (taxon 2373252)
- Cichlid Room Companion — Andersen (2012), 'Greenwoodochromis bellcrossi: a spectacular deepwater species from Lake Tanganyika', Cichlid News 21(2):6–12 (abstract)
- O'Reilly et al. (2003), 'Climate change decreases aquatic ecosystem productivity of Lake Tanganyika, Africa', Nature 424:766–768 (PubMed record)