Trematocranus placodon "Ruarwe"
Ruarwe — roo-AH-rweh (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 Ruarwe
- 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 Ruarwe population
Trematocranus placodon "Ruarwe" is the Ruarwe population of Trematocranus placodon, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the northern 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 Ruarwe 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 "Ruarwe"
- 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