Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Lethrinops turneri

Lethrinops turneri "Mazinzi Reef"

Mazinzi Reef — mah-ZEEN-zee 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 turneri account →

Specific to Mazinzi 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 turneri.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2018
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size3.7 in9.4 cm standard length
Temperature75–82 °F24–28 °C
pH7.7–8.6alkaline
Depth7–92 ft2–28 m
DietSand-sifting benthic invertivore
BreedingMaternal mouthbrooder (lek-spawner; male defends sandy territory)~30 eggs per batch
Sexual dimorphismYesBreeding males develop a bold orange-brown patch on the nape and upper head and show silvery flanks with orange iridescence; females and immature males are plain silvery with faint bars and lack the nape patch.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Mazinzi Reef population

Lethrinops turneri "Mazinzi Reef" is the Mazinzi Reef population of Lethrinops turneri, 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 turneri, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Mazinzi Reef fish at malawi.si →

About the species

Lethrinops turneri is a small, sand-sifting haplochromine cichlid endemic to the southern Lake Malawi basin — occurring both in the southern arms of Lake Malawi itself and in the shallow, hyperproductive Lake Malombe just to the south. Although it went unnamed until 2003, it is anything but obscure: in Lake Malombe it is the dominant food fish, and surveys in 1990 estimated that seine nets took more than 2,500 tonnes of it in a single year — roughly 850 million individual fish. Males in breeding condition are recognizable by a vivid patch of orange-brown that suffuses the nape and upper head, a mark so consistent that Konings had already been circulating the fish among hobbyists as Lethrinops 'pink head' before Ngatunga and Snoeks formally described it.

Full Lethrinops turneri account →

Sources

  1. malawi.si — Lethrinops turneri "Mazinzi Reef"
  2. FishBase — Lethrinops turneri Ngatunga & Snoeks, 2003
  3. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Lethrinops turneri (species record, spid=67320)
  4. GBIF — Lethrinops turneri Ngatunga & Snoeks, 2003 (taxon key 2372757; holotype SAIAB 60072)
  5. Ngatunga, B.P. and J. Snoeks, 2003. Lethrinops turneri, a new shallow-water haplochromine cichlid (Teleostei: Cichlidae) from the Lake Malawi basin. Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters 14(2): 127–136 (abstract via malawicichlids.com)
  6. The ETYFish Project — Cichlidae (Pseudocrenilabrinae l–o): Lethrinops / turneri etymology