Nyassachromis microcephalus "Itungi"
Itungi — ee-TOON-gee (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 Nyassachromis microcephalus account →Specific to Itungi
- 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 Nyassachromis microcephalus.
The Itungi population
Nyassachromis microcephalus "Itungi" is the Itungi population of Nyassachromis microcephalus, a geographic colour form from the Tanzania coast of Lake Malawi in the far northern part of the lake. It is the same species as Nyassachromis microcephalus, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Itungi fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Nyassachromis microcephalus is a small, short-headed sand cichlid endemic to Lake Malawi, described by Ethelwynn Trewavas in 1935 from Monkey Bay. One of the smaller members of its genus, it lives over open sandy shallows and feeds on plankton in midwater, forming small schools. Like its relatives it is a sand bower-builder: breeding males heap up a sand turret topped by a distinctly slanted spawning dish, a structure close to that of Nyassachromis purpurans. With an apparently lake-wide distribution and a healthy presence on suitable sand, it is rated Least Concern by the IUCN.
Full Nyassachromis microcephalus account →Sources
- malawi.si — Nyassachromis microcephalus "Itungi"
- FishBase — Nyassachromis microcephalus (Trewavas, 1935)
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Nyassachromis microcephalus (species record; Monkey Bay type locality, valid name)
- Trewavas, E., 1935 — A synopsis of the cichlid fishes of Lake Nyasa. Annals and Magazine of Natural History (Series 10) 16(91): 65–118 (original description, Haplochromis microcephalus)
- Eccles, D. H. & E. Trewavas, 1989 — Malawian Cichlid Fishes: a classification of some Haplochromine genera (Nyassachromis erected; microcephalus placed here)
- The ETYFish Project — Cichlidae (Pseudocrenilabrinae l–o): Nyassachromis microcephalus etymology (micro- + -cephalus, 'small head')