Taxonomy & naming
Juan Jacobo Schmitter-Soto described Amatitlania kanna in 2007, within his systematic revision of the genus Archocentrus (Zootaxa 1603) — the same paper that erected the genus Amatitlania for the convict cichlid and its allies. The type locality is the San San Swamp on the Atlantic slope of Bocas del Toro Province in western Panama, and the holotype is held at the Field Museum (FMNH 59243). Unlike the older convicts, Amatitlania kanna was named directly into Amatitlania and has never been shuffled through 'Cichlasoma' or Cryptoheros, though the boundaries among these small convict genera stay contested and some workers treat the species cautiously pending further study. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes lists it as valid — Amatitlania kanna Schmitter-Soto 2007 — and FishBase follows. The epithet kanna is Greek for a reed or cane, a nod to the reedy, vegetated swamp where the fish was collected.
Morphology
Amatitlania kanna is a small cichlid, reaching about 3.5 in in standard length (FishBase). It carries the compact, oval convict body and the dark vertical barring typical of the group, set on a pale grey to bluish ground, with the bars darkening or fading according to mood and breeding state. Because the species is known almost entirely from Schmitter-Soto's original description and a handful of museum specimens, the published account of its colour and fine morphology is thin: the characters that separate it from its relatives rest on technical features of the scales, fin-ray counts and osteology detailed in the 2007 revision rather than on any obvious external badge. Sexual dimorphism is presumed to follow the usual convict pattern — males larger with longer, more pointed unpaired fins, females smaller and rounder — but the literature does not document the detail for this particular species, and that gap is stated rather than filled in.
Habitat
The species lives on the Atlantic (Caribbean) slope of western Panama and adjacent Costa Rica, with the type series taken from the San San Swamp of Bocas del Toro and the catalogue giving the range as Atlantic Panama and Costa Rica. The San San Pond Sak wetlands are a warm coastal-lowland complex of swamps, slow blackwater creeks and vegetated channels near sea level; both the fish's name and its type habitat point to reedy, heavily vegetated still waters over soft, organic substrates. FishBase treats it as a benthopelagic tropical freshwater fish. Precise temperature, pH and depth figures are not well published for the species, but its lowland coastal-swamp setting implies warm, soft, near-neutral to mildly acidic water, and its range sits within the Atlantic-slope fauna of lower Central America (broadly the Caribbean-Panama / Chiriquí freshwater province).
Feeding
Amatitlania kanna is presumed to be a small benthic omnivore in the manner of its dwarf-convict relatives, working the bottom for small invertebrates and insect larvae and gleaning algae, fine plant matter and detritus from vegetation, wood and the substrate of its swampy home. No dedicated dietary study of the species has been published, so this picture is drawn from the genus rather than from any stomach-contents analysis of Amatitlania kanna itself — worth saying plainly, because the fish is genuinely little studied. In its reedy swamp it would work the vegetated cover and soft bottom as a generalist gleaner, not as a predator or specialist.
Mating
Like the other members of the genus, Amatitlania kanna is assumed to be a monogamous, biparental, pair-bonding cave-spawner: a male and female choose and defend a cavity among roots, wood, leaf litter or submerged structure, then go through the familiar cichlid courtship of lateral display, fin-spreading and shared cleaning of the spawning surface. Courtship and pair formation in this species have never been documented in the literature, so the account leans on the consistent breeding biology of its close relatives rather than on study of Amatitlania kanna itself — an honest limitation for a fish described barely more than fifteen years ago and rarely kept.
Breeding
Amatitlania kanna is expected to breed as a biparental cave-spawner like the rest of the genus, laying adhesive eggs on the wall or roof of a chosen cavity, with the female fanning and tending the clutch while the male holds the territory, and both parents leading and guarding the free-swimming fry as a school. No clutch size, spawning observation or captive-breeding account has been published for this species specifically. Given its small size the broods would be modest, but any number would be an inference from its relatives rather than a documented count, so none is asserted here. Its breeding biology is best regarded as essentially undocumented and read off the dwarf-convict pattern.
In the aquarium
Amatitlania kanna is effectively a museum and field species rather than an aquarium fish. It is rarely if ever offered in the hobby, and there is no established body of husbandry experience for it as there is for the true convict or the T-bar cichlid. Anyone who did encounter it would keep it as a small, warm-water dwarf convict of soft, vegetated Caribbean-Panama lowlands. Tank: a soft substrate with plenty of plant cover, wood, leaf litter and dedicated spawning caves. Water: warm (around 75–82 °F), soft to moderate, near-neutral to slightly acidic, with good filtration and regular water changes. Diet: a varied small-omnivore menu of quality flake, small sinking pellets and frozen or live invertebrates. All of this, though, is reasoned extrapolation from the genus, not documented practice for Amatitlania kanna, and that distinction should stay in view — the species is listed here for completeness of the Amatitlania radiation, not as a hobby recommendation.
Conservation
The IUCN Red List assesses Amatitlania kanna as Endangered (assessed 17 June 2019). The listing reflects a very small, narrowly recorded range centred on the San San Swamp and neighbouring Atlantic-slope wetlands of western Panama, and the pressures bearing on those coastal lowlands: drainage and conversion of wetlands, deforestation and sedimentation, agricultural and plantation expansion, pollution, and introduced species. A fish confined to a small set of coastal swamp habitats is acutely exposed to their degradation, and that exposure is what the Endangered category records. No detailed population data are published. The species carries no CITES listing, and because it is not established in the hobby there is no captive reservoir to fall back on — which makes the condition of its wild wetlands the whole of its conservation story.