Labidochromis strigatus "Chizumulu Island"
Chizumulu Island — chee-zoo-MOO-loo 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 strigatus account →Specific to Chizumulu 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 strigatus.
The Chizumulu Island population
Labidochromis strigatus "Chizumulu Island" is the Chizumulu Island population of Labidochromis strigatus, 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 strigatus, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Chizumulu Island fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Labidochromis strigatus is a striped, crevice-feeding mbuna documented from Chizumulu Island in northern Lake Malawi, part of the large and still incompletely resolved genus Labidochromis. Like its relatives it carries the genus's diagnostic forceps-like jaw, adapted for reaching invertebrates that other mbuna cannot get at, and its epithet — Latin for "striped" — points to the barred flank pattern that helped separate it from the many other small rock-dwelling Labidochromis crowding the same reefs. It is a locality specialist in every sense: known from a single well-documented island population in a genus where nearly every rocky point along the shoreline seems to host its own subtly distinct form.
Full Labidochromis strigatus account →