Hemitilapia oxyrhyncha "Mumbo Island"
Mumbo Island — MOOM-boh 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 Hemitilapia oxyrhyncha account →Specific to Mumbo 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 Hemitilapia oxyrhyncha.
The Mumbo Island population
Hemitilapia oxyrhyncha "Mumbo Island" is the Mumbo Island population of Hemitilapia oxyrhyncha, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Hemitilapia oxyrhyncha, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Mumbo Island fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Hemitilapia oxyrhyncha is a Lake Malawi cichlid that earns its keep as a botanist among predators: it makes its living grazing the thin film of algae that coats the strap-shaped leaves of underwater Vallisneria. Often rolling onto its flank to work a single leaf from base to tip with a spade-shaped lower jaw, it is one of the lake's most specialized plant-grazers. Endemic to the Malawi basin and widespread within it, the "Giant Hap" is a large, blue-flushed member of the lake's non-mbuna "hap" radiation that remains uncommon in aquaria.
Full Hemitilapia oxyrhyncha account →Sources
- malawi.si — Hemitilapia oxyrhyncha "Mumbo Island"
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes: Hemitilapia oxyrhynchus (Boulenger 1902)
- FishBase: Hemitilapia oxyrhynchus (Giant Haplochromis)
- FishBase Field Guide: Hemitilapia oxyrhynchus
- BioLib: Hemitilapia oxyrhynchus links and literature
- Fryer & Iles (1972), The Cichlid Fishes of the Great Lakes of Africa, as summarized in M.K. Oliver's Trophic Adaptations of Lake Malawi cichlids