Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Tropheops tropheops

Tropheops tropheops "Domwe Island"

Domwe Island — DOHM-weh 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 tropheops account →

Specific to Domwe 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 tropheops.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2018
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size5.5 in14 cm total length
Temperature75–79 °F24–26 °C
pH8–8.5alkaline
Depth3–33 ft1–10 m
DietGrazes filamentous aufwuchs (algae) from rock
BreedingMaternal mouthbrooderup to ~40 eggs
Sexual dimorphismYesDominant males metallic grey-blue with orange anal-fin egg-spots; females and subordinate males plain brown, tan or muted yellow
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Domwe Island population

Tropheops tropheops "Domwe Island" is the Domwe Island population of Tropheops tropheops, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Tropheops tropheops, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Domwe Island fish at malawi.si →

About the species

Tropheops tropheops is a stocky, algae-grazing mbuna endemic to the rocky shallows of Lake Malawi, and the fish that lends its name to an entire genus. It is the textbook example of a Malawi cichlid built for one job: a steep, blunt head and a small, downturned mouth packed with teeth, angled at roughly 45 degrees to the rock so it can nibble and wrench tough filamentous algae loose. Its relatives have become a favourite system for studying how rift-lake fishes split into new forms along a depth gradient, which makes this otherwise unassuming brown-and-orange cichlid quietly important to evolutionary biology.

Full Tropheops tropheops account →

Sources

  1. malawi.si — Tropheops tropheops "Domwe Island"
  2. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Tropheops tropheops (species record)
  3. FishBase — Tropheops tropheops (Regan, 1922) summary
  4. FishBase — Tropheops tropheops (mirror, SpecCode 2381)
  5. Goldstein, H. M. 2009. Taxonomic review of the genus Tropheops with descriptions of new species (M.S. thesis, Penn State)
  6. Li, Konings & Stauffer 2016 — A revision of the Pseudotropheus elongatus species group (Zootaxa, PDF)