Altolamprologus calvus "Kapampa"
Kapampa — kah-PAHM-pah (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 Altolamprologus calvus account →Specific to Kapampa
- 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 Altolamprologus calvus.
The Kapampa population
The Kapampa form of Altolamprologus calvus comes from the southern Democratic Republic of Congo shore of Lake Tanganyika, collected near Kapampa at roughly 8°33'S. What sets it apart from every other calvus locality is its ground colour: a warm yellowish to golden wash lies over the usual pearlescent scale pattern, unlike the near-black "Black Congo" fish from further north or the chalky-white Zambian populations sold as "White Calvus" or "Pearl Calvus." That yellow is stable and heritable — breeders have held it across many captive generations by keeping the line pure — and the fish has been traded in the specialist Tanganyika hobby as "Yellow Calvus" since at least the 1990s. It also means the value of a Kapampa fish rests on a clean locality: cross it with another calvus and the golden wash is gone within a generation.
Colour reference: living Kapampa fish at seriouslyfish.com →
About the species
Altolamprologus calvus — the pearly or black calvus — is a slender, armor-scaled predatory cichlid found only along the rocky southwestern shore of Lake Tanganyika. Its body is so strongly flattened from side to side that it can slip into rock cracks too narrow for almost any rival or predator — a build that doubles as a hunting tool and as the basis of an unusual breeding trick, in which the female spawns inside a crevice too small for the male to follow. Patient, deliberate, and slow-growing, it ranks among the lake's most coveted aquarium fish, and its fortunes are now tied to the silting of the very shoreline it depends on.
Full Altolamprologus calvus account →Sources
- Poll, M. (1978). Contribution à la faune ichthyologique du lac Tanganika. Bulletin de l'Académie Royale de Belgique 64: 725–758
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Altolamprologus calvus
- FishBase — Altolamprologus calvus
- Konings, A. (2015). Tanganyika Cichlids in their Natural Habitat, 3rd ed. Cichlid Press
- IUCN Red List — Altolamprologus calvus (Near Threatened, 2025)
- Seriously Fish — Altolamprologus calvus
- Cichlid Room Companion — Altolamprologus calvus
- cichlid-forum.com — Altolamprologus keeping and breeding