Tropheops macrophthalmus "Chizumulu Island"Golden Yellow Tropheops
Tropheops macrophthalmus (Chirwa Island, Chitande Island, Chizumulu Island, Kirondo, Linganjala Reef, Lumbila, Makonde, Mdowa)
Chizumulu Island — chee-zoo-MOO-loo EYE-land (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 Tropheops macrophthalmus account →Specific to Chizumulu Island
- 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 Tropheops macrophthalmus.
The Chizumulu Island population
Tropheops macrophthalmus "Chizumulu Island" is the Chizumulu Island population of Tropheops macrophthalmus, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the central part of the lake. It is the same species as Tropheops macrophthalmus, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Chizumulu Island fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Tropheops macrophthalmus is a small, rock-grazing cichlid found only in the northern reaches of Lake Malawi, one of the lake's enormous flock of mbuna. First described as a Pseudotropheus in 1926, it spent most of a century shuffling between genera before settling into Tropheops, the lineage of blunt-headed algae specialists. Like its relatives it is a maternal mouthbrooder, and across its range it splinters into a string of geographic colour forms tied to individual reefs and islands.
Full Tropheops macrophthalmus account →Sources
- malawi.si — Tropheops macrophthalmus "Chizumulu Island"
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Tropheops macrophthalmus (species record)
- FishBase — Tropheops macrophthalmus (Ahl, 1926)
- Genner, Turner & Hawkins (1999), Resource control by territorial male cichlid fish in Lake Malawi (J. Animal Ecology 68:522–529) — abstract
- Genner et al. 1999 — Resource control by territorial male cichlid fish in Lake Malawi (full article)
- Li et al. 2016, Zootaxa — phylogeny supporting Tropheops as a genus (PDF)
- IUCN Red List — Tropheops macrophthalmus "Chizumulu Island"