Shuja horei "Kitawe"
Shuja horei (Bulu Point, Cape Mpimbwe, Kalambo Lodge, Kasanga, Kipili, Kisambala, Kitawe, Mkangazi, Nkonkonti Point)
Kitawe — kee-TAH-weh (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 Kitawe
- 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 Kitawe population
Shuja horei "Kitawe" is the Kitawe population of Shuja horei, a geographic colour form from the Tanzania coast of Lake Tanganyika in the 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 Kitawe 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 "Kitawe"
- 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)