Petrotilapia flaviventris "Cobwe"
Petrotilapia flaviventris (Chiteko, Chiwi Rocks, Chizumulu Island, Cobwe, Linganjala Reef, Londo Bay, Lumbaulo, Machili Island, Mbamba Islands, Undu Reef)
Cobwe — KOH-bweh (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 Petrotilapia flaviventris account →Specific to Cobwe
- 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 Petrotilapia flaviventris.
The Cobwe population
Petrotilapia flaviventris "Cobwe" is the Cobwe population of Petrotilapia flaviventris, a geographic colour form from Lake Malawi in Lake Malawi part of the lake. It is the same species as Petrotilapia flaviventris, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Cobwe fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Petrotilapia flaviventris is a rock-grazing mbuna cichlid endemic to Lake Malawi, described only in 2011 from Chizumulu Island. Like all members of its genus, it wears a set of broad, fleshy, tooth-studded lips that it presses against algae-covered rock to comb out diatoms and loose filaments. The species takes its name from the egg-yolk yellow that floods the belly, throat, and lower flanks of breeding males, a feature that earned it the informal hobby tag "yellow ventral" before it had a formal name.
Full Petrotilapia flaviventris account →Sources
- malawi.si — Petrotilapia flaviventris "Cobwe"
- Petrotilapia flaviventris — FishBase summary
- Catalog of Fishes (Eschmeyer/CAS) — Petrotilapia flaviventris
- EOL — Petrotilapia flaviventris Lundeba, Stauffer & Konings 2011
- Lundeba, Stauffer & Konings (2011), Five new species of the genus Petrotilapia, Ichthyol. Explor. Freshwat. 22(2):149–168
- Ribbink et al. (1983), A preliminary survey of the cichlid fishes of rocky habitats in Lake Malawi, S. Afr. J. Zool. 18:149–310 (genus ecology, cited in IUCN)