Interochromis loocki "Mamalesa Island"
Interochromis loocki (Chimba, Kala, Kalambo Lodge, Kasanga, Katondo Point, Kerenge Island, Kisambala, Mamalesa Island, Mawimbi, Mboko Island, Mvuna Island, Ulwile Island)
Mamalesa Island — mah-mah-LEH-sah 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 Interochromis loocki account →Specific to Mamalesa 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 Interochromis loocki.
The Mamalesa Island population
Interochromis loocki "Mamalesa Island" is the Mamalesa Island population of Interochromis loocki, a geographic colour form from the Tanzania coast of Lake Tanganyika in the central part of the lake. It is the same species as Interochromis loocki, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Mamalesa Island fish at tanganyika.si →
About the species
Interochromis loocki is a stocky, rock-grazing cichlid endemic to Lake Tanganyika and the sole member of its genus. To hobbyists it is best known under the old trade label "a Petrochromis-like fish (sold under various 'Petrochromis sp.' trade names)," and that nickname turns out to be more than a marketing convenience: anatomy, gut structure, and recent genome-scale phylogenies all place this fish squarely among the aufwuchs-scraping Petrochromis, even though it carries its own generic name. It is a small fish with a big appetite for algae and a temper to match, occupying a defined depth band on the lake's rocky littoral slopes.
Full Interochromis loocki account →Sources
- tanganyika.si — Interochromis loocki "Mamalesa Island"
- Interochromis loocki — FishBase summary
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Limnotilapia loocki / Interochromis loocki
- Yamaoka, Hori & Kuwamura (1998), Interochromis, a new genus of the Tanganyikan cichlid fish (abstract, CRC)
- Hata & Ochi (2016), Depth and substratum differentiations among coexisting herbivorous cichlids in Lake Tanganyika, R. Soc. Open Sci.
- Phylogenomics of trophically diverse cichlids (Singh et al. 2022), Ecol. Evol. — loocki in Petrochromis Clade II
- IUCN Red List — Interochromis loocki "Mamalesa Island"