Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Lethrinops chilingali

Lethrinops chilingali "Lake Chilingali"

Lake Chilingali — LAYK chee-leen-GAH-lee (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 chilingali account →

Specific to Lake Chilingali

  • 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 chilingali.

IUCNNOT EVALUATED
NEnot on the EX–LC scale
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size3.9 in9.9 cm standard length
Depth0–16 ft0–5 m
DietInvertivore — gut contents (2009) dominated by Chaoborus larvae/pupae, plus cladocerans, odonatan nymphs and caridinid shrimps; little detritus, suggesting more midwater feeding than typical Lethrinops sand-sifters
BreedingMaternal mouthbrooderNot quantified; anal-fin egg-spots (4–18) present in males
Sexual dimorphismYesFemales and non-territorial males have a broken midlateral stripe and countershaded pattern; dominant males develop dark lachrymal/eye stripe, dark fins and anal-fin egg-spots during display.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Lake Chilingali population

Lethrinops chilingali "Lake Chilingali" is the Lake Chilingali population of Lethrinops chilingali, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the south-central part of the lake. It is the same species as Lethrinops chilingali, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Lake Chilingali fish at malawi.si →

About the species

Lethrinops chilingali is a small sand-sifting cichlid described in 2023 from Lake Chilingali, a tiny satellite lake in the Kaombe River catchment near Nkhotakota, Malawi — emphatically NOT Lake Malawi proper, but one of the small, intermittently connected basins around its edge. The describing authors believed it was already extinct in the wild, unrecorded in nature since 2009 after a man-made dam collapsed and drained its lake, with only captive breeding populations in European aquaria standing between it and total extinction. In a hopeful twist, fieldwork in 2024 rediscovered the species, now abundant again in the refilled lake and the surrounding catchment. It remains formally unassessed by the IUCN.

Full Lethrinops chilingali account →

Sources

  1. malawi.si — Lethrinops chilingali "Lake Chilingali"
  2. Turner, G.F., D.A. Crampton & M.J. Genner, 2023 — A new species of Lethrinops (Cichliformes: Cichlidae) from a Lake Malawi satellite lake, believed to be extinct in the wild. Zootaxa 5318(4):518 (original description)
  3. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Lethrinops chilingali (species record; authorship, type locality 12.94°S 34.21°E, valid-name status)
  4. Turner, Crampton & Genner 2023 — A new species of Lethrinops (PubMed record)
  5. Turner, Crampton & Genner 2023 — A new species of Lethrinops (Bangor University research portal record)
  6. Genner, M.J. et al. 2007 — work on Lake Chilingali and the Kaombe outflow (satellite-lake background cited in the description)