Xenotilapia caudafasciata "Chituta Bay"
Chituta Bay — chee-TOO-tah BAY (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 Xenotilapia caudafasciata account →Specific to Chituta Bay
- 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 Xenotilapia caudafasciata.
The Chituta Bay population
Xenotilapia caudafasciata "Chituta Bay" is the Chituta Bay population of Xenotilapia caudafasciata, a geographic colour form from the Zambia coast of Lake Tanganyika in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Xenotilapia caudafasciata, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Chituta Bay fish at tanganyika.si →
About the species
Xenotilapia caudafasciata is a sand-dwelling cichlid endemic to Lake Tanganyika, one of more than a dozen members of a genus that has made a living gliding over the lake's open sand floor. It is a deep-water specialist, most at home between about 165 and 250 ft (50–75 m), and it carries a quiet oddity: it is the only Xenotilapia in which the females grow larger than the males. A maternal mouthbrooder that sifts invertebrates from the substrate, it is admired but rarely kept, a fish more often seen in a diver's photograph than a hobbyist's tank.
Full Xenotilapia caudafasciata account →Sources
- tanganyika.si — Xenotilapia caudafasciata "Chituta Bay"
- Xenotilapia caudafasciata — FishBase species summary
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes (California Academy of Sciences)
- Species in Lake Tanganyika — FishBase ecosystem list
- Feeding Ecology of Lake Tanganyika Cichlids (review)
- O'Reilly et al. 2003 — Climate change decreases productivity of Lake Tanganyika (Nature)