Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Telmatochromis temporalis

Telmatochromis temporalis "Magara"

Magara — mah-GAH-rah (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 temporalis account →

Specific to Magara

  • 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 temporalis.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2006
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size4 in10.2 cm total length
Temperature75–82 °F24–28 °C
pH8–9alkaline
Depth16–66 ft5–20 m
DietAufwuchs browser; grazes algae, diatoms, and associated microinvertebrates from sunlit rock surfaces (trophic level ~2.2); opportunistically takes small invertebrates and microorganisms.
BreedingCave/substrate spawner (rock crevice or empty Neothauma snail shell)20–30 fry per brood
Sexual dimorphismYesMales develop a more pronounced nuchal hump and are larger; pale/dark dichromatism reflects microhabitat (sunlit vs. shaded), reversible when fish changes territory.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Magara population

Telmatochromis temporalis "Magara" is the Magara population of Telmatochromis temporalis, a geographic colour form from the Burundi coast of Lake Tanganyika in the far northern part of the lake. It is the same species as Telmatochromis temporalis, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Magara fish at tanganyika.si →

About the species

Telmatochromis temporalis is a stocky, bulldog-faced lamprologine cichlid endemic to Lake Tanganyika, instantly set apart from its slim, Julidochromis-like relatives by a deep body and a blunt nuchal hump. What makes it a textbook fish, though, is that it comes in two very different packages: a normal rock-dwelling form that grows to a few inches and shelters under stones, and a much smaller dwarf form that lives buried in the empty snail shells of the lake's shell beds. Biologists treat the pair as a living snapshot of speciation in progress, with body size itself acting as the lever that is prying the two forms apart.

Full Telmatochromis temporalis account →

Sources

  1. tanganyika.si — Telmatochromis temporalis "Magara"
  2. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Telmatochromis temporalis (species record)
  3. FishBase — Telmatochromis temporalis summary
  4. GBIF — Telmatochromis temporalis (Boulenger, 1898)
  5. Hanssens & Snoeks (2001) — A revised synonymy of Telmatochromis temporalis (Teleostei, Cichlidae), Journal of Fish Biology
  6. Aibara et al. (2021) — Mapping of quantitative trait loci underlying a magic trait in ongoing ecological speciation, BMC Genomics