Trematocranus placodon "Malopa"
Malopa — mah-LOH-pah (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 Trematocranus placodon account →Specific to Malopa
- 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 Trematocranus placodon.
The Malopa population
Trematocranus placodon "Malopa" is the Malopa population of Trematocranus placodon, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the south-central part of the lake. It is the same species as Trematocranus placodon, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Malopa fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Trematocranus placodon, the snail-crusher hap, is a sand-dwelling cichlid of Lake Malawi and its outflow waters that earns its name with a set of flat, paving-stone teeth on its throat bones, used to grind open lake snails. That same specialization makes it more than a curiosity: by cropping the snails that carry human schistosomiasis, the fish sits at an unusual intersection of cichlid ecology and public health. It is a big, handsome haplochromine that males turn out in metallic blues to spawn over broad sand craters they sculpt by mouth.
Full Trematocranus placodon account →Sources
- malawi.si — Trematocranus placodon "Malopa"
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Trematocranus placodon (Regan 1922)
- FishBase — Trematocranus placodon summary
- Malawi Cichlids (malawicichlids.com) — Trematocranus placodon
- Madsen, Kamanga, Stauffer & Likongwe (2010), Biology of the Molluscivorous Fish Trematocranus placodon, Journal of Freshwater Ecology 25:449-455
- Chiotha, McKaye & Stauffer (1991), Prey handling in Trematocranus placodon — abstract