Petrotilapia sp. "Fuscous" "Jalo Reef"
Jalo Reef — JAH-loh REEF (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 sp. "Fuscous" account →Specific to Jalo Reef
- 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 sp. "Fuscous".
The Jalo Reef population
Petrotilapia sp. "Fuscous" "Jalo Reef" is the Jalo Reef population of Petrotilapia sp. "Fuscous", a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the south-central part of the lake. It is the same species as Petrotilapia sp. "Fuscous", distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Jalo Reef fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Petrotilapia sp. "Fuscous" is an undescribed rock-scraping mbuna from the mid-western shore of Lake Malawi, recorded from the Maleri Islands group and nearby island reefs. Petrotilapia is the lake’s genus of dedicated algae scrapers — deep-bodied, heavily muscled fish with several rows of hooked, recurved teeth built to strip tough algal turf from wave-battered vertical rock. The genus is notoriously under-described: extreme sexual dichromatism and strong locality-based colour variation mean many populations are known only by trade names, of which this is one. "Fuscous" — Latin for dusky or dark brown — points to its colouration. It has no describing author, FishBase entry, or IUCN status.
Full Petrotilapia sp. "Fuscous" account →