Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Telmatochromis temporalis

Telmatochromis temporalis "Mahale Mountains NP"

Mahale Mountains NP — mah-HAH-leh moh-oon-TAH-eens NP (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 Mahale Mountains NP

  • 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 Mahale Mountains NP population

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

Colour reference: living Mahale Mountains NP 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 "Mahale Mountains NP"
  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