Melanochromis baliodigma "Border"
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 Melanochromis baliodigma account →Specific to Border
- 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 Melanochromis baliodigma.
The Border population
Melanochromis baliodigma "Border" is the Border population of Melanochromis baliodigma, 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 Melanochromis baliodigma, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Border fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Melanochromis baliodigma is a small, blotch-patterned rock-dweller (mbuna) endemic to a single corner of Lake Malawi, where it haunts the broken zone in which sand meets rock around Membe Island. Described in 1997, it is one of the genus's quieter members in the hobby — and one of its more surprising in ecology: rather than rasping algae like a typical mbuna, it works the crevices as an opportunistic micro-predator, taking small fishes and raiding the eggs of brooding catfishes.
Full Melanochromis baliodigma account →Sources
- malawi.si — Melanochromis baliodigma "Border"
- Bowers & Stauffer 1997 — 'Eight new species of rock-dwelling cichlids of the genus Melanochromis (Teleostei: Cichlidae) from Lake Malawi, Africa' (Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters 8(1): 49-70)
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Melanochromis baliodigma (species record, valid name)
- FishBase — Melanochromis baliodigma summary
- GBIF — Melanochromis baliodigma Bowers & Stauffer, 1997
- The ETYFish Project (C. Scharpf) — Cichlidae: Melanochromis etymology