Spathodus marlieri "Nondwa Point"
Nondwa Point — NOHN-dwah POYNT (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 Spathodus marlieri account →Specific to Nondwa Point
- 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 Spathodus marlieri.
The Nondwa Point population
Spathodus marlieri "Nondwa Point" is the Nondwa Point population of Spathodus marlieri, a geographic colour form from the Tanzania coast of Lake Tanganyika in the northern part of the lake. It is the same species as Spathodus marlieri, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Nondwa Point fish at tanganyika.si →
About the species
Spathodus marlieri is the largest of Lake Tanganyika's goby cichlids — the squat, blunt-faced little fish hobbyists call "Tanganyika clowns" — and the odd one out of the group in more ways than its size. Endemic to the lake's northern shores, it lives jammed into the surf-battered rock just below the waterline, grazing the algal film with a slightly reduced swimbladder that keeps it pinned to the bottom. Most strikingly, while its cousins are famously biparental mouthbrooders that pass the brood from female to male, Spathodus marlieri abandoned that arrangement entirely and broods maternally, like most other African cichlids.
Full Spathodus marlieri account →Sources
- tanganyika.si — Spathodus marlieri "Nondwa Point"
- FishBase — Spathodus marlieri (Poll, 1950)
- Catalog of Fishes (CAS) — Spathodus marlieri, species record
- GBIF — Spathodus marlieri Poll, 1950
- Rüber, Verheyen & Meyer (1999) — Replicated evolution of trophic specializations in an endemic cichlid lineage from Lake Tanganyika, PNAS 96(18):10230–10235
- Kuwamura et al. — Female-to-male shift of mouthbrooding in a cichlid fish (note on S. marlieri's exclusively maternal mouthbrooding)