Lethrinops macrophthalmus "Jalo Reef"
Jalo Reef — JAH-loh REEF (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 macrophthalmus account →Specific to Jalo Reef
- 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 macrophthalmus.
The Jalo Reef population
Lethrinops macrophthalmus "Jalo Reef" is the Jalo Reef population of Lethrinops macrophthalmus, 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 macrophthalmus, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Jalo Reef fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Lethrinops macrophthalmus is a large-eyed, sand-sifting cichlid documented from Jalo Reef in Lake Malawi, named — as its Greek epithet spells out plainly — for an eye conspicuously larger than usual even by the standards of a genus already known for big-eyed sand-dwellers. That oversized eye is thought to help these fish pick out the faint movement of buried invertebrates against an otherwise featureless sand or mud floor, and in Lethrinops it often runs hand in hand with deeper, dimmer water where visual contrast is harder to come by. It belongs to the wider Lethrinops radiation of soft-bottom specialists that quietly work the open sand between Lake Malawi's rocky reefs, a habitat easy to overlook next to the flashier mbuna but no less thoroughly colonised.
Full Lethrinops macrophthalmus account →