Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Tropheops tropheops

Tropheops tropheops "Makanjila Point"

Makanjila Point — mah-kahn-JEE-lah POYNT (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 Makanjila Point

  • 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 Makanjila Point population

Tropheops tropheops "Makanjila Point" is the Makanjila Point population of Tropheops tropheops, 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 Tropheops tropheops, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Makanjila Point 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 "Makanjila Point"
  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)