The world's cichlid waters, from the inside out.
How a lake's temperature, pH, oxygen and clarity change with depth, place and season — and the cichlids that live within those conditions, every species mapped and described from primary research. The water body comes first.
Explore a water body
12 cichlid waters mapped so far — every one taken apart layer by layer. More of the world's cichlid lakes and rivers are on the way.
Lake Tanganyika
Second-deepest and second-oldest lake on Earth.
Lake Malawi
Also Lake Nyasa or Niassa: the southernmost of the great African rift lakes.
Lake Kivu
A Rift lake perched on the Congo–Nile divide and draining south into Lake Tanganyika via the Ruzizi River.
Laguna de Apoyo
A water-filled volcanic crater beside Lake Nicaragua, ~21 km² and ~175 m deep.
Sea of Galilee
The Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret), the freshwater lake of the Jordan Rift in northern Israel — about 166 km² in area, ~21 km long and up to ~43 m deep, lying roughly 210 m below sea level.
Lake Managua
Lake Managua (Xolotlán), ~1,040 km² in the Nicaraguan depression, draining south to Lake Nicaragua via the Río Tipitapa.
Lake Mweru
A large, shallow lake of the Luapula–Mweru system in the Congo basin, southwest of Tanganyika: about 5,120 km² in area, 131 km long and only ~7.
Lake Nicaragua
Central America's largest lake (Lago Cocibolca): roughly 8,260 km², ~160 km long and shallow — about 13 m deep on average, ~26 m at most — draining to the Caribbean through the San Juan River.
Lake Rukwa
A shallow, alkaline, endorheic lake in the Rukwa Rift of southwestern Tanzania, between Lakes Tanganyika and Malawi.
Cuatro Ciénegas
A desert basin of spring-fed pools and channels (pozas) in Coahuila, Mexico — a Ramsar wetland and one of North America's great endemism hotspots.
Hormozgan Coastal Rivers
The coastal rivers, streams and springs of Hormozgan province in southern Iran, draining to the Persian Gulf at the Strait of Hormuz.
Lower Rio Grande
The lower Rio Grande (Río Bravo) of southern Texas and northeastern Mexico — home to Herichthys cyanoguttatus, the Rio Grande cichlid, the only cichlid native to the United States.
What's inside each lake
Most fish sites start with the fish. We start with the water — each lake is a first-class subject, taken apart layer by layer.
The water itself
How temperature, oxygen, pH and clarity stack up from the surface to the lightless deep — and shift from shore to shore and season to season.
Habitats & food web
Rocky reefs, sand floors and open water, and the algae, plankton and substrate beneath it all that feed everything above.
The life within
Every georeferenced species record in the lake, mapped — filter to a single fish to see exactly where it lives.