Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Trematocara zebra

Trematocara zebra "Kigoma"

Kigoma — kee-GOH-mah (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 zebra account →

Specific to Kigoma

  • 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 zebra.

IUCNNEAR THREATENED · 2025
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size2.7 in6.9 cm standard length
Temperature75–81 °F24–27 °C
pH8.6–9.3alkaline
Depth33–197 ft10–60 m
DietNocturnal benthic carnivore — feeds chiefly on shrimps and other small invertebrates of the rocky bottom (sand and phytoplankton in stomachs read as incidental)
BreedingMaternal mouthbroodersmall; a ripe female yielded 41 eggs of ~1.5 mm diameter
Sexual dimorphismYesSexually dichromatic: males show up to ~10 dark vertical bars/blotches on a brownish body with a black band above the dorsal base and dark fin margins (the 'zebra' look); females instead show a broad dark horizontal band from the pectoral base to above the vent.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Kigoma population

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

Colour reference: living Kigoma fish at tanganyika.si →

About the species

Trematocara zebra is a small, slender cichlid known only from the rocky northern shores of Lake Tanganyika, where it lives in dim sublittoral water and shelters by day in caves and burrows. Like the rest of its genus, it carries an unusually well-developed network of head and lateral-line pores — a sensory rig for finding prey in low light — and ranks among the more cryptic, rarely-seen fish of the lake's deepwater guild. Described only in 1996 and recorded from a handful of sites, it is a fish far better known to ichthyologists and night-diving photographers than to aquarists.

Full Trematocara zebra account →

Sources

  1. tanganyika.si — Trematocara zebra "Kigoma"
  2. Trematocara zebra — FishBase summary
  3. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes (species record, CAS)
  4. Trematocara zebra — iNaturalist taxon page
  5. De Vos, Nshombo & Thys van den Audenaerde (1996), Belg. J. Zool. 126(1):3-20 — original description (FishBase main reference)
  6. Cichlid fish fauna of Lake Tanganyika — current taxonomic inventory (J. Great Lakes Res.)