Xenotilapia ornatipinnis "Karago"
Karago — kah-RAH-goh (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 ornatipinnis account →Specific to Karago
- 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 ornatipinnis.
The Karago population
Xenotilapia ornatipinnis "Karago" is the Karago population of Xenotilapia ornatipinnis, a geographic colour form from the Tanzania coast of Lake Tanganyika in the far northern part of the lake. It is the same species as Xenotilapia ornatipinnis, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Karago fish at tanganyika.si →
About the species
Xenotilapia ornatipinnis is a silvery, large-eyed sand-cichlid endemic to Lake Tanganyika, where it cruises the open sand flats below the rocky shoreline in loose schools. Described by George Albert Boulenger in 1901, it belongs to the tribe Ectodini, the lake's diverse flock of sand- and mud-dwellers. Brooding is mostly a female-only affair here — in most recorded cases she carries the clutch to term alone — though transfer of the eggs to a male has been documented on occasion, the kind of facultative biparental care that makes several of its Ectodine relatives interesting to biologists. Its species name, roughly "ornate-finned," points to the iridescent, color-flecked finnage that drew it the hobby nickname "the pearl from the deep," also traded early on as the "Pearly Xenotilapia."
Full Xenotilapia ornatipinnis account →Sources
- tanganyika.si — Xenotilapia ornatipinnis "Karago"
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Xenotilapia ornatipinnis (species record)
- FishBase — Xenotilapia ornatipinnis (summary page)
- FishBase — Xenotilapia ornatipinnis territory/distribution list
- Kidd et al. — Repeated Parallel Evolution of Parental Care Strategies within Xenotilapia (Lake Tanganyika)
- Koblmüller et al. — Evolutionary Relationships in the Sand-Dwelling Cichlid Lineage of Lake Tanganyika