Maylandia livingstonii "Kande Island"
Kande Island — KAHN-deh EYE-land (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 Maylandia livingstonii account →Specific to Kande Island
- 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 Maylandia livingstonii.
The Kande Island population
Maylandia livingstonii "Kande Island" is the Kande Island population of Maylandia livingstonii, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the central part of the lake. It is the same species as Maylandia livingstonii, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Kande Island fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Maylandia livingstonii is a small sand-dwelling cichlid endemic to Lakes Malawi and Malombe, better known to taxonomists under its currently accepted name Pseudotropheus livingstonii (Boulenger, 1899). For decades its name was one of the most thoroughly muddled in the Malawi hobby: the fish people bought as "livingstonii" was usually a different shell-dwelling species entirely, and the true livingstonii circulated under the wrong label. A 2016 redescription finally sorted the confusion, confirming this as a schooling sand-sifter of the shallow inshore zone whose tie to snail shells is real but limited.
Full Maylandia livingstonii account →Sources
- malawi.si — Maylandia livingstonii "Kande Island"
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Tilapia/Pseudotropheus livingstonii (Boulenger 1899)
- FishBase — Pseudotropheus livingstonii summary
- FishBase (mirror) — Maylandia/Pseudotropheus livingstonii
- Stauffer, Konings & Ryan 2016 — Redescription of Pseudotropheus livingstonii and P. elegans, Zootaxa 4154(2):169–178 (Magnolia Press)
- Stauffer, Konings & Ryan 2016 — taxonomic treatment & description (Zenodo/Plazi)