Placidochromis nigribarbis "Mid-North Station"
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 Placidochromis nigribarbis account →Specific to Mid-North Station
- 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 Placidochromis nigribarbis.
The Mid-North Station population
Placidochromis nigribarbis "Mid-North Station" is the Mid-North Station population of Placidochromis nigribarbis, a geographic colour form from Lake Malawi in Lake Malawi part of the lake. It is the same species as Placidochromis nigribarbis, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Mid-North Station fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Placidochromis nigribarbis is a small, little-known haplochromine cichlid endemic to Lake Malawi, one of the many deep-water Placidochromis named in a single stroke by the Belgian ichthyologist Mark Hanssens in his 2004 monographic revision of the genus. The epithet nigribarbis is Latin for 'black-bearded' (niger, 'black' + barba, 'beard'), most plausibly referring to a dark marking on the chin or lower jaw region of this deep-water Placidochromis, though the exact feature intended by Hanssens's original diagnosis is not confirmed here. It is documented from a locality malawi.si records as 'Mid-North Station' — most likely a fisheries or research trawl-survey station in the middle-northern part of the lake rather than a shoreline place name, and like its many relatives in the same revision it is known chiefly from preserved, trawled specimens rather than from living, brightly coloured fish.
Full Placidochromis nigribarbis account →Sources
- malawi.si — Placidochromis nigribarbis "Mid-North Station"
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Placidochromis nigribarbis (valid name, authorship, type data)
- Hanssens, M., 2004 — The deep-water Placidochromis species. In: J. Snoeks (ed.), The Cichlid Diversity of Lake Malawi/Nyasa/Niassa: Identification, Distribution and Taxonomy, pp. 104-197. Cichlid Press (original description of the deep-water Placidochromis cohort)
- Konings, A. — Malawi Cichlids in their Natural Habitat (Cichlid Press; foremost Malawi authority)