Nimbochromis venustus "Senga Bay"Venustus
Nimbochromis venustus (Luwala Reef, Senga Bay, Zimbawe Rock)
Senga Bay — SEHN-gah BAY (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 Nimbochromis venustus account →Specific to Senga Bay
- 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 Nimbochromis venustus.
The Senga Bay population
Nimbochromis venustus "Senga Bay" is the Senga Bay population of Nimbochromis venustus, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Nimbochromis venustus, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Senga Bay fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Nimbochromis venustus, the venustus or giraffe cichlid of Lake Malawi, is among the most recognisable and widely kept large haplochromine cichlids in the hobby: males in breeding dress glow an intense peacock-blue over a warm yellow ground, while both sexes carry the dark, giraffe-like blotching that gives the fish one of its trade names. It is a patient, specialist hunter that earns its place in the Nimbochromis lineage of ambush predators — capable of settling motionless onto the sand, mimicking a dead fish, until a smaller cichlid draws close enough to seize.
Full Nimbochromis venustus account →Sources
- malawi.si — Nimbochromis venustus "Senga Bay"
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes: Nimbochromis venustus (species record, spid=37995)
- FishBase: Nimbochromis venustus (Boulenger, 1908)
- Eccles, D.H. & Trewavas, E. 1989. Malawian Cichlid Fishes: The Classification of Some Haplochromine Genera. Lake Fish Movies, Herten
- ETYFish Project: Family Cichlidae (part 4 of 7): Pseudocrenilabrinae (l–o) — Nimbochromis etymology
- Konings, A. 2016. Malawi Cichlids in their Natural Habitat, 5th ed. Cichlid Press, El Paso, Texas
- IUCN Red List — Nimbochromis venustus "Senga Bay"