Lethrinops sp. "Auritus Selewa" "Selewa"
Selewa — seh-LEH-wah (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 sp. "Auritus Selewa" account →Specific to Selewa
- 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 sp. "Auritus Selewa".
The Selewa population
Lethrinops sp. "Auritus Selewa" "Selewa" is the Selewa population of Lethrinops sp. "Auritus Selewa", a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the northern part of the lake. It is the same species as Lethrinops sp. "Auritus Selewa", distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Selewa fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Lethrinops sp. "Auritus Selewa" is an undescribed sand-dwelling cichlid from the northern Malawian shore of Lake Malawi, recorded at Mlowe and Selewa. Its trade name signals a close resemblance to the formally described golden sand-eater, Lethrinops auritus, while marking it as a distinct, unnamed population from its own locality. Like its better-known relative it belongs to the lake's sand-sifting utaka-allied radiation — small, large-eyed cichlids that pick invertebrates from soft sediment rather than grazing rock — but it has never itself been given a scientific name.
Full Lethrinops sp. "Auritus Selewa" account →Sources
- malawi.si — Lethrinops sp. "Auritus Selewa" "Selewa"
- malawi.si — Lethrinops species and locality database
- Cichlid Room Companion — Lethrinops genus overview (Ad Konings, curator)
- Konings, A. — Malawi Cichlids in their Natural Habitat (Cichlid Press; Lethrinops biology, bower-building, and northern-lake locality forms)