Nyassachromis nigritaeniatus "Chipoka"
Chipoka — chee-POH-kah (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 nigritaeniatus account →Specific to Chipoka
- 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 nigritaeniatus.
The Chipoka population
Nyassachromis nigritaeniatus "Chipoka" is the Chipoka population of Nyassachromis nigritaeniatus, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Nyassachromis nigritaeniatus, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Chipoka fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Nyassachromis nigritaeniatus is a sand-dwelling cichlid endemic to the Monkey Bay area of Lake Malawi, and one of the larger members of its genus, with males reaching about 21 cm. Ethelwynn Trewavas described it in 1935 and named it for a narrow black stripe — about one scale wide — running from the gill-cover spot to the base of the tail. It lives over open sand at moderate depth and feeds on zooplankton taken in midwater, and like the rest of Nyassachromis the males spawn at sand nests on the lake floor. The IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
Full Nyassachromis nigritaeniatus account →Sources
- malawi.si — Nyassachromis nigritaeniatus "Chipoka"
- FishBase — Nyassachromis nigritaeniatus (Trewavas, 1935)
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Nyassachromis nigritaeniatus (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 nigritaeniatus)
- Eccles, D. H. & E. Trewavas, 1989 — Malawian Cichlid Fishes: a classification of some Haplochromine genera (Nyassachromis erected; nigritaeniatus placed here; black-stripe diagnosis)
- The ETYFish Project — Cichlidae (Pseudocrenilabrinae l–o): Nyassachromis nigritaeniatus etymology (niger + taeniatus, 'black-banded')