Tyrannochromis polyodon "Nakantenga Island"
Nakantenga Island — nah-kahn-TEHN-gah 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 Tyrannochromis polyodon account →Specific to Nakantenga 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 Tyrannochromis polyodon.
The Nakantenga Island population
Tyrannochromis polyodon "Nakantenga Island" is the Nakantenga Island population of Tyrannochromis polyodon, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Tyrannochromis polyodon, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Nakantenga Island fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Tyrannochromis polyodon is a large, big-jawed predatory cichlid from Lake Malawi, one of the lake's handful of giant ambush hunters that patrol the rocky and sandy shore for smaller fish. Its epithet — Greek for "many teeth" — describes a mouth built to seize prey rather than to graze. It sits inside a small, taxonomically contested genus: the closely related Tyrannochromis macrostoma has at times absorbed it as a synonym, though the name polyodon continues to be treated as valid for populations like the ones documented here, spanning sites from the far north of the lake to the southwestern arm.
Full Tyrannochromis polyodon account →Sources
- malawi.si — Tyrannochromis polyodon "Nakantenga Island"
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — online database (authority for valid fish names; Haplochromis polyodon Trewavas, 1935)
- Konings, A. — Malawi Cichlids in their Natural Habitat (Cichlid Press; genus Tyrannochromis and the macrostoma/polyodon synonymy question)