Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Neolamprologus fasciatus

Neolamprologus fasciatus "Mbita Island"

Mbita Island — m-BEE-tah 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 Neolamprologus fasciatus account →

Specific to Mbita 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 Neolamprologus fasciatus.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2006
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size5.9 in15 cm total length
Temperature73–79 °F23–26 °C
pH7.5–9alkaline
Depth7–49 ft2–15 m
DietCarnivore; primarily shrimp and other crustaceans, also juvenile cichlids ambushed from crevices
BreedingCave/crevice spawner; also uses large empty snail shells~200 eggs
Sexual dimorphismYesMales grow substantially larger than females (to ~15 cm vs ~9 cm); males show slightly more pronounced yellow flecking on gill covers
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Mbita Island population

Neolamprologus fasciatus "Mbita Island" is the Mbita Island population of Neolamprologus fasciatus, a geographic colour form from the Zambia coast of Lake Tanganyika in the north-central part of the lake. It is the same species as Neolamprologus fasciatus, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Mbita Island fish at tanganyika.si →

About the species

Neolamprologus fasciatus is a slab-sided predatory cichlid endemic to Lake Tanganyika, where it patrols rocky shorelines hunting juvenile fish and shrimp. Most catalogs now file it under the genus Altolamprologus, and the back-and-forth over its name mirrors a genuinely tangled evolutionary history. More elongate and less hump-backed than its famous relatives the "compressed" cichlids, it spawns in tight crevices and empty snail shells, the female slipping into a gap too narrow for the larger male to follow.

Full Neolamprologus fasciatus account →

Sources

  1. tanganyika.si — Neolamprologus fasciatus "Mbita Island"
  2. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Lamprologus/Altolamprologus fasciatus (Boulenger 1898)
  3. FishBase — Neolamprologus fasciatus summary
  4. Phylogenetic relationships of the Lake Tanganyika cichlid tribe Lamprologini (Mol. Phylogenet. Evol.)
  5. O'Reilly et al. 2003 — Climate change decreases aquatic ecosystem productivity of Lake Tanganyika (Nature)
  6. Lake Tanganyika: Status, challenges, and opportunities for research (J. Great Lakes Res.)