Neolamprologus leleupi "Cape Caramba"Lemon cichlid
Neolamprologus leleupi (Bilila (Kavala) Island, Black Throat, Cape Caramba, Cape Tembwe, Kapampa, Kawasindi Island, Kilima, Kitumba, Luhanga, Milima Island, Mtoto, Talama, Uvira, Wimbi)
Cape Caramba — KAYP cah-RAHM-bah (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 leleupi account →Specific to Cape Caramba
- 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 leleupi.
The Cape Caramba population
Neolamprologus leleupi "Cape Caramba" is the Cape Caramba population of Neolamprologus leleupi, a geographic colour form from the Democratic Republic of the Congo coast of Lake Tanganyika in the northern part of the lake. It is the same species as Neolamprologus leleupi, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Cape Caramba fish at tanganyika.si →
About the species
Neolamprologus leleupi, the lemon cichlid, is a small rock-dwelling cichlid endemic to Lake Tanganyika and one of the few solid-yellow fishes in a lake otherwise dominated by stripes and bars. Slender, cave-loving and quietly predatory, it hunts invertebrates in the crevices of the rocky littoral and has been an aquarium favorite since the late 1950s — prized for a buttercup-to-orange color that, tellingly, can shift with mood, diet and even the color of the gravel beneath it.
Full Neolamprologus leleupi account →Sources
- tanganyika.si — Neolamprologus leleupi "Cape Caramba"
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Lamprologus leleupi / Neolamprologus longior entry (Poll 1956; Staeck 1980)
- FishBase — Neolamprologus leleupi (Poll, 1956) summary
- O'Reilly et al. 2003, 'Climate change decreases aquatic ecosystem productivity of Lake Tanganyika, Africa' (Nature)
- Cohen et al. 2016, 'Climate warming reduces fish production and benthic habitat in Lake Tanganyika' (PNAS)
- IUCN Red List — Neolamprologus leleupi "Cape Caramba"