Shuja horei "Kipili"
Shuja horei (Bulu Point, Cape Mpimbwe, Kalambo Lodge, Kasanga, Kipili, Kisambala, Kitawe, Mkangazi, Nkonkonti Point)
Kipili — kee-PEE-lee (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 Shuja horei account →Specific to Kipili
- 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 Shuja horei.
The Kipili population
Shuja horei "Kipili" is the Kipili population of Shuja horei, a geographic colour form from the Tanzania coast of Lake Tanganyika in the north-central part of the lake. It is the same species as Shuja horei, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Kipili fish at tanganyika.si →
About the species
Shuja horei is a robust, predatory haplochromine-like cichlid found throughout the inshore margins of Lake Tanganyika and its feeder rivers. A member of the lake's Tropheini, it has been shuffled between genera for over a century — Haplochromis, Ctenochromis, briefly Pseudosimochromis, and most recently the new genus Shuja — because the old genus Ctenochromis proved to be an artificial grouping. For aquarists it is notorious on a different axis entirely: pound for pound it is among the most belligerent mouthbrooders the lake produces, a fish that hobbyists describe with equal parts admiration and exhaustion.
Full Shuja horei account →Sources
- tanganyika.si — Shuja horei "Kipili"
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — horei (Chromis), valid as Shuja horei (Günther 1894)
- FishBase — Shuja horei (Günther, 1894) [formerly Ctenochromis horei]
- Genner et al. (2022) — Revision of the African cichlid fish genus Ctenochromis (Teleostei, Cichliformes), including a description of the new genus Shuja from Lake Tanganyika and the new species Ctenochromis scatebra from northern Tanzania. European Journal of Taxonomy 819: 23–54
- Schedel et al. 2019 — Major fraction of African cichlids diversified during the Miocene (placed horei in Pseudosimochromis) (BMC Evolutionary Biology 19)
- Wanek & Sturmbauer 2015 — Form, function and phylogeny: comparative morphometrics of Lake Tanganyika's cichlid tribe Tropheini (Zoologica Scripta 44)
- IUCN Red List — Shuja horei (Least Concern, 2025; species-level assessment)