Labidochromis sp. "Blue Bar" "Namalenje Island"
Namalenje Island — nah-mah-LEHN-jeh 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 Labidochromis sp. "Blue Bar" account →Specific to Namalenje 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 Labidochromis sp. "Blue Bar".
The Namalenje Island population
Labidochromis sp. "Blue Bar" "Namalenje Island" is the Namalenje Island population of Labidochromis sp. "Blue Bar", a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Labidochromis sp. "Blue Bar", distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Namalenje Island fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Labidochromis sp. "Blue Bar" is an undescribed rock-dwelling cichlid recorded at Namalenje Island on the Malawian shore of Lake Malawi. Its trade name records the two field marks used to identify it — a blue body colour and dark vertical barring on the flanks — a combination shared, at least in general outline, with some populations of the far better-known Labidochromis caeruleus, though this form has never been confirmed as that species or given a description of its own. It belongs to a genus of some three dozen recognised species, many of them separated by exactly this kind of fine-grained, locality-specific colour difference.
Full Labidochromis sp. "Blue Bar" account →