Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Telmatochromis dhonti

Telmatochromis dhonti "Mkangazi"

Mkangazi — m-kahn-GAH-zee (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 Telmatochromis dhonti account →

Specific to Mkangazi

  • 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 Telmatochromis dhonti.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2025
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size4.7 in12 cm total length
Temperature75–79 °F24–26 °C
pH8.5–9alkaline
Depth16–49 ft5–15 m
DietBenthic invertivore; primarily chironomid larvae and other invertebrates scraped from rock and sediment surfaces; also takes biofilm (aufwuchs) opportunistically
Breedingsubstrate spawner (cave/crevice brooder)50–100 eggs per typical spawn; up to ~500 eggs reported (possibly cumulative)
Sexual dimorphismYesMales substantially larger than females; females may be 30–40% smaller; male-only orange-to-red horizontal head markings in some populations
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Mkangazi population

Telmatochromis dhonti "Mkangazi" is the Mkangazi population of Telmatochromis dhonti, 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 Telmatochromis dhonti, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Mkangazi fish at tanganyika.si →

About the species

Telmatochromis dhonti is a stocky, sediment-tolerant lamprologine cichlid endemic to Lake Tanganyika, where it lives over rock and intermediate zones in often-turbid shallows. Plain and dark brown in the wild, it hides one of the worst tempers in the genus: keepers consistently rank it among the most genuinely dangerous African cichlids its size. It is also the one Telmatochromis that ventures out of the lake itself, turning up well down the Lukuga River, the lake's only outflow. Behind the modest looks sits a tangled taxonomy of synonyms and a still-unsettled split between large northern and small southern populations.

Full Telmatochromis dhonti account →

Sources

  1. tanganyika.si — Telmatochromis dhonti "Mkangazi"
  2. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Telmatochromis dhonti (Boulenger 1919)
  3. FishBase — Telmatochromis dhonti
  4. GBIF — Fisheries of Lake Tanganyika (occurrence dataset incl. Telmatochromis dhonti)
  5. Indermaur et al. 2025 — Morphological diversity of the genus Telmatochromis (Journal of Fish Biology)
  6. Hanssens & Snoeks 2001 — A revised synonymy of Telmatochromis temporalis (Journal of Fish Biology)