Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Xenotilapia leptura

Xenotilapia leptura "Mahale Mountains NP"

Mahale Mountains NP — mah-HAH-leh moh-oon-TAH-eens NP (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 leptura account →

Specific to Mahale Mountains NP

  • 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 leptura.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2025
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size4.3 in11 cm total length
Temperature75–79 °F24–26 °C
pH7.5–8.5alkaline
Depth10–131 ft3–40 m
DietHerbivore — a rocky grazer scraping filamentous and unicellular algae (aufwuchs) from stone, with opportunistic plankton-picking in open water.
BreedingBiparental mouthbrooderSmall, on the order of a few dozen eggs (genus-typical; not precisely documented)
Sexual dimorphismYesWeak. Males average slightly larger and color up more strongly at breeding; sexes otherwise look alike and are best told apart by spawning behavior.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Mahale Mountains NP population

Xenotilapia leptura "Mahale Mountains NP" is the Mahale Mountains NP population of Xenotilapia leptura, 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 Xenotilapia leptura, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Mahale Mountains NP fish at tanganyika.si →

About the species

Xenotilapia leptura is a slender, rock-grazing cichlid endemic to Lake Tanganyika, recognizable by its low-slung, downward-facing mouth built for scraping algae from stone. Unusually for its lineage, it is a vegetarian among mostly invertebrate-sifting relatives, and it is a biparental mouthbrooder in which both parents share the brood. Its name is a taxonomic moving target: described in the monotypic genus Asprotilapia, moved into Xenotilapia by some authors, and still listed as Asprotilapia leptura by the Catalog of Fishes and the IUCN.

Full Xenotilapia leptura account →

Sources

  1. tanganyika.si — Xenotilapia leptura "Mahale Mountains NP"
  2. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — species record for leptura (Asprotilapia)
  3. FishBase — Xenotilapia leptura summary
  4. GBIF — Xenotilapia Boulenger, 1899
  5. WoRMS / Marine Species Traits — Xenotilapia leptura (Boulenger, 1901)
  6. Takahashi, T. (2003). Systematics of Tanganyikan cichlid fishes (Teleostei: Perciformes). Ichthyological Research 50:367–382