Chalinochromis brichardi "Maswa"
Maswa — MAH-swah (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 Julidochromis brichardi account →Specific to Maswa
- 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 Julidochromis brichardi.
The Maswa population
Chalinochromis brichardi "Maswa" is the Maswa population of Chalinochromis brichardi, 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 Chalinochromis brichardi, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Maswa fish at tanganyika.si →
About the species
Julidochromis brichardi is a slender, beige rock-cichlid endemic to Lake Tanganyika, named for the three dark lines stitched across its forehead like a horse's bridle — the feature that gave its genus its Greek name (chalina, "bridle"). It threads the cracks and caves of the lake's rocky shore, plucking small invertebrates from the algal-and-sponge film that coats the stone. Long treated as the type of its own genus, it has lately become a flashpoint in cichlid taxonomy: recent DNA work places it squarely inside the closely allied genus Julidochromis, and some specialists now regard the name Chalinochromis as a synonym.
Full Julidochromis brichardi account →Sources
- tanganyika.si — Chalinochromis brichardi "Maswa"
- FishBase: Chalinochromis brichardi
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes (California Academy of Sciences)
- GBIF: Chalinochromis brichardi Poll, 1974
- Encyclopedia of Life: Chalinochromis brichardi
- FishBase: Chalinochromis cyanophleps (diagnosis vs. C. brichardi)
- IUCN Red List — Chalinochromis brichardi "Maswa"