Paracyprichromis brieni "Kombe"
Kombe — KOHM-beh (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 Paracyprichromis brieni account →Specific to Kombe
- 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 Paracyprichromis brieni.
The Kombe population
Paracyprichromis brieni "Kombe" is the Kombe population of Paracyprichromis brieni, a geographic colour form from the Zambia coast of Lake Tanganyika in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Paracyprichromis brieni, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Kombe fish at tanganyika.si →
About the species
Paracyprichromis brieni is a slender, schooling cichlid endemic to Lake Tanganyika, where it hangs in loose clouds against the deep rocky shoreline and picks zooplankton out of the open water. It belongs to the small tribe Cyprichromini, the lake's water-column specialists, and shares its rocks with the closely related, larger-eyed Paracyprichromis nigripinnis. Its most distinctive trick is reproductive: unlike the open-water Cyprichromis, brieni fertilizes its eggs against a vertical rock face before the female ever takes them into her mouth, a fast head-down spawning that has made it a model for studies of cichlid mating systems.
Full Paracyprichromis brieni account →Sources
- tanganyika.si — Paracyprichromis brieni "Kombe"
- FishBase: Paracyprichromis brieni summary
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes (species record, Paracyprichromis brieni)
- Ochi (1996) Mating systems of two midwater-spawning cichlids, Cyprichromis microlepidotus and Paracyprichromis brieni, in Lake Tanganyika — Ichthyological Research 43(3):239–246
- Sefc et al. — Mating and Parental Care in Lake Tanganyika's Cichlids (review, PMC3142683)
- O'Reilly et al. (2003) Climate change decreases aquatic ecosystem productivity of Lake Tanganyika — Nature