Lethrinops macracanthus "South East Arm"
South East Arm — SOWTH EEST ARM (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 macracanthus account →Specific to South East Arm
- 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 macracanthus.
The South East Arm population
Lethrinops macracanthus "South East Arm" is the South East Arm population of Lethrinops macracanthus, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Lethrinops macracanthus, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living South East Arm fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Lethrinops macracanthus is a sand-dwelling haplochromine cichlid documented from the South East Arm of Lake Malawi, part of the large genus Lethrinops whose members sift the lake's open sandy and muddy floors for buried invertebrates. Its epithet, from the Greek for "large spine," points to a prominent fin spine used to help distinguish it from the genus's many similar-looking sand-sifters — a genus in which subtle fin, eye, and body-proportion characters often do more identification work than colour. Like its relatives it belongs to a radiation of open-water specialists that has repeatedly and independently colonised the lake's soft-bottom habitats, each species carving out its own narrow slice of depth, substrate, or geography.
Full Lethrinops macracanthus account →