Copadichromis borleyi "Kadango"
Kadango — kah-DAHN-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 Copadichromis borleyi account →Specific to Kadango
- 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 Copadichromis borleyi.
The Kadango population
Copadichromis borleyi is one of Lake Malawi's most visually commanding open-water cichlids — a specialist zooplankton picker that spends its days hovering above rocky reefs in loose shoals, snapping individual crustaceans and larvae from the water column. The Kadango form, collected from a small village on the western Malawian shore of the lake at roughly 12°55'S in Nkhotakota District, has become the benchmark of the species in the global cichlid hobby: dominant males develop a chrome-blue head that bleeds abruptly into blazing scarlet-red to orange-red flanks, a colour combination so vivid that early importers named it 'Red Empress', a trade label that now effectively means the Kadango lineage specifically. Because the Kadango locality produces fish of unusually intense red saturation compared with other borleyi populations, it has been by far the most commonly collected and exported form for over three decades, and maintaining location-pure Kadango lines remains a priority for serious breeders.
Colour reference: living Kadango fish at seriouslyfish.com →
About the species
Copadichromis borleyi is a zooplankton-feeding cichlid endemic to Lake Malawi and one of the most recognizable members of the lake's "utaka" guild — the open-water haplochromines that hover in shoals above the rocks and pick drifting copepods out of the current. Sold across the hobby as the "red fin" or "Kadango" hap, it pairs a vivid blue-faced, red- or yellow-flanked male with a flexible, suction-style feeding habit that ties it tightly to the lake's plankton. It is common, widespread, and listed as Least Concern, even as the basin it depends on comes under growing strain.
Full Copadichromis borleyi account →Sources
- Iles, T.D. (1960). A group of zooplankton feeders (Haplochromis) in Lake Nyasa. Annals and Magazine of Natural History (13)3: 257–280
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Copadichromis borleyi
- FishBase — Copadichromis borleyi
- Konings, A. (2016). Malawi Cichlids in their Natural Habitat, 5th ed. Cichlid Press
- IUCN Red List — Copadichromis borleyi (Least Concern, 2018)
- Seriously Fish — Copadichromis borleyi
- Cichlid Room Companion — Copadichromis borleyi
- Chavula, G. et al. (2023). Threats to Lake Malawi biodiversity. Fisheries Research