Variabilichromis moorii "Katondo Point"
Katondo Point — kah-TOHN-doh 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 Variabilichromis moorii account →Specific to Katondo 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 Variabilichromis moorii.
The Katondo Point population
Variabilichromis moorii "Katondo Point" is the Katondo Point population of Variabilichromis moorii, a geographic colour form from the Tanzania coast of Lake Tanganyika in the north-central part of the lake. It is the same species as Variabilichromis moorii, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Katondo Point fish at tanganyika.si →
About the species
Variabilichromis moorii is a small, dark, fiercely territorial cichlid found only in the southern half of Lake Tanganyika, where it tends algae-covered rock faces in the sunlit shallows. It is one of the few members of the substrate-spawning tribe Lamprologini to make a living grazing filamentous algae, and it pairs for life — yet genetic studies reveal that the brood a male defends so violently is, on average, only about two-thirds his own. The dramatic switch from canary-yellow juveniles to coal-black adults gives the genus its name, "the variable cichlid."
Full Variabilichromis moorii account →Sources
- tanganyika.si — Variabilichromis moorii "Katondo Point"
- FishBase — Variabilichromis moorii
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes (Fricke, Eschmeyer & Van der Laan)
- Hata et al. 2014 — Diet disparity among sympatric herbivorous cichlids in the same ecomorphs (BMC Biology)
- Takeuchi et al. 2016 — Depth and substratum differentiations among coexisting herbivorous cichlids (Royal Society Open Science)
- Depth segregation and diet disparity revealed by stable isotope analysis (PMC4657292)