Labidochromis caeruleus "Lions Cove"
Lions Cove — LY-uhnz KOHV (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 Labidochromis caeruleus account →Specific to Lions Cove
- 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 Labidochromis caeruleus.
The Lions Cove population
Labidochromis caeruleus "Lions Cove" is the Lions Cove population of Labidochromis caeruleus, a geographic colour form from Lake Malawi in Lake Malawi part of the lake. It is the same species as Labidochromis caeruleus, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Lions Cove fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Labidochromis caeruleus is a small, forceps-toothed mbuna from Lake Malawi's rocky reefs — and thanks to one bright-yellow population near Lion's Cove, it may be the single most kept African cichlid in the world. The name is a standing joke: caeruleus means 'blue,' because the fish Geoffrey Fryer described in 1956 from Nkhata Bay was a startling cobalt-and-white animal, not the canary-yellow 'electric yellow' that later conquered the hobby. Across the northern half of the lake the species is really a patchwork of colour forms — white, blue-barred, and yellow — that taxonomists still bundle, tentatively, under one name. Almost every fish in the trade is captive-bred, which is part of why this is the mbuna most often recommended to beginners.
Full Labidochromis caeruleus account →Sources
- malawi.si — Labidochromis caeruleus "Lions Cove"
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Labidochromis caeruleus Fryer 1956 (species record, type locality, holotype BMNH 1956.9.4.9)
- FishBase — Labidochromis caeruleus (Blue streak hap)
- GBIF — Labidochromis caeruleus Fryer, 1956
- The ETYFish Project — Pseudocrenilabrinae (l-o): Labidochromis caeruleus etymology
- malawi.si (M.K. Oliver / Stuart Grant database) — Labidochromis caeruleus 'Nkhata Bay': type locality, biotope, distribution, colour variants