Trematocara macrostoma "Chituta Bay"
Chituta Bay — chee-TOO-tah BAY (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 Trematocara macrostoma account →Specific to Chituta Bay
- 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 Trematocara macrostoma.
The Chituta Bay population
Trematocara macrostoma "Chituta Bay" is the Chituta Bay population of Trematocara macrostoma, a geographic colour form from the Zambia coast of Lake Tanganyika in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Trematocara macrostoma, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Chituta Bay fish at tanganyika.si →
About the species
Trematocara macrostoma is a small, silvery cichlid endemic to the deep water of Lake Tanganyika, known almost entirely from dead specimens hauled up in nets from 60 to 100 meters down. It belongs to a genus of sensory-pore-faced fishes that spend the day in the dark profundal and ride the nightly rise of plankton up the lake slopes to feed. What sets this species apart is the male's spectacularly elevated dorsal fin, a sail unlike anything else in the lake's cichlid fauna, which has earned it the trade nickname 'sailfin'. It has essentially never been observed alive in the wild and is absent from the aquarium hobby.
Full Trematocara macrostoma account →Sources
- tanganyika.si — Trematocara macrostoma "Chituta Bay"
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Trematocara macrostoma (CAS)
- FishBase — Trematocara macrostoma summary
- GBIF — Trematocara macrostoma Poll, 1952 (backbone)
- Kirchberger, Sefc, Sturmbauer & Koblmüller (2012) — Evolutionary History of Lake Tanganyika's Predatory Deepwater Cichlids, Int. J. Evol. Biol.
- O'Reilly et al. (2003) — Climate change decreases aquatic ecosystem productivity of Lake Tanganyika, Nature (PubMed)