Lethrinops albus "Kande Island"
Kande Island — KAHN-deh 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 Lethrinops albus account →Specific to Kande 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 Lethrinops albus.
The Kande Island population
Lethrinops albus "Kande Island" is the Kande Island population of Lethrinops albus, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the central part of the lake. It is the same species as Lethrinops albus, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Kande Island fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Lethrinops albus is a silvery, sand-dwelling haplochromine cichlid endemic to Lake Malawi, one of the species Charles Tate Regan placed in his newly erected genus Lethrinops in 1922. Across broad sandy shelves at moderate depth it works the bottom for buried invertebrates, dropping its protrusible jaws into the substrate and sifting mouthfuls of sand to strain out insect larvae and small crustaceans. Drab and unassuming for most of the year, breeding males flush blue-green over the head and body with a yellow throat, a transformation that drives the genus's lek-style courtship on the open sand.
Full Lethrinops albus account →Sources
- malawi.si — Lethrinops albus "Kande Island"
- FishBase — Lethrinops albus (Regan, 1922)
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Lethrinops albus (species record)
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Lethrinops (genus record)
- GBIF — Lethrinops albus Regan, 1922
- The ETYFish Project — Cichlidae (Pseudocrenilabrinae l–o): Lethrinops / albus etymology