Labidochromis chisumulae "Chiwi Rocks"
Chiwi Rocks — CHEE-wee ROKS (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 chisumulae account →Specific to Chiwi Rocks
- 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 chisumulae.
The Chiwi Rocks population
Labidochromis chisumulae "Chiwi Rocks" is the Chiwi Rocks population of Labidochromis chisumulae, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the central part of the lake. It is the same species as Labidochromis chisumulae, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Chiwi Rocks fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Labidochromis chisumulae is a small blue-and-black mbuna found nowhere on Earth but the rocky shallows of a single small island in Lake Malawi. Males flush a clear sky-blue at spawning, crossed by a dark bar that runs from eye to lower jaw; females stay a plain pearly cream. Like the rest of its genus it is a delicate-jawed picker rather than a rasper, drawing tiny invertebrates one by one from crevices in the algal turf — a quiet, peaceable fish whose tiny world makes it more interesting than its modest size suggests.
Full Labidochromis chisumulae account →Sources
- malawi.si — Labidochromis chisumulae "Chiwi Rocks"
- FishBase — Labidochromis chisumulae (Lewis, 1982)
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Labidochromis chisumulae (species record)
- GBIF — Labidochromis chisumulae Lewis, 1982
- M. K. Oliver — Labidochromis chisumulae, The Cichlid Fishes of Lake Malawi, Africa (malawicichlids.com; holotype BMNH 1981.1.9:79)
- Lewis, D. S. C. 1982 — A revision of the genus Labidochromis (Teleostei: Cichlidae) from Lake Malawi. Zool. J. Linn. Soc. 75: 189-265 (original description)