Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Neolamprologus fasciatus

Neolamprologus fasciatus "Moliro"

Moliro — moh-LEE-roh (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 Moliro

  • 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 Moliro population

Neolamprologus fasciatus "Moliro" is the Moliro population of Neolamprologus fasciatus, a geographic colour form from the Democratic Republic of the Congo coast of Lake Tanganyika in the 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 Moliro 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 "Moliro"
  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.)