Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Neolamprologus callipterus

Lamprologus callipterus "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 Neolamprologus callipterus 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 Neolamprologus callipterus.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2025
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size6 in15 cm total length
Temperature73–82 °F23–28 °C
pH7–8.5alkaline
Depth15–39 ft4.5–12 m
DietOpportunistic carnivore; feeds on small invertebrates, crustaceans, and prey sifted from the substrate; non-territorial schools are known to raid other fish territories in a swarm ('the mob'), consuming whatever invertebrates are exposed.
BreedingSubstrate spawner — female spawns inside an empty Neothauma snail shell; male fertilizes from outside by pressing his vent to the shell mouthClutch laid egg by egg over approximately 6–12 hours; female broods inside the shell for ~10–14 days
Sexual dimorphismYesExtreme sexual size dimorphism: males reach 13–15 cm TL, females only ~4–4.5 cm TL. Body-mass ratios of 12:1 (Wonzye Point, Zambia) to ~60:1 (Muzimo, northern DRC) have been recorded — the most extreme male-larger dimorphism documented in any animal. A third 'dwarf' male morph, genetically fixed via Y-linked inheritance, is smaller even than females.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Maswa population

Lamprologus callipterus "Maswa" is the Maswa population of Lamprologus callipterus, 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 Lamprologus callipterus, 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

Neolamprologus callipterus is a Lake Tanganyika cichlid built around a single object: the empty shell of a freshwater snail. Dominant males haul hundreds of these shells, one mouthful at a time, into tidy nest-piles on the lake floor, then guard them as breeding real estate for the much smaller females who spawn inside. The size gap between the sexes is the most extreme of its kind in the animal kingdom — a nesting male can outweigh a brooding female by more than twelve to one, and in some northern populations by sixty — and the species runs a second, stranger trick on top of that: a genetically distinct line of "dwarf" males so tiny they can slip into the shell behind a spawning female to steal fertilizations. It is one of the most-studied fish in the lake, and a textbook case of how a breeding resource can sculpt a body.

Full Neolamprologus callipterus account →

Sources

  1. tanganyika.si — Lamprologus callipterus "Maswa"
  2. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Lamprologus callipterus (Boulenger, 1906)
  3. FishBase — Lamprologus callipterus (Boulenger, 1906)
  4. Schütz & Taborsky (2000), J. Fish Biology — Giant males or dwarf females: what determines the extreme sexual size dimorphism in Lamprologus callipterus?
  5. Schütz et al. (2012), Int. J. Evol. Biol. — Spawning Coordination of Mates in a Shell Brooding Cichlid
  6. Singh et al. (2023), Molecular Ecology — Genomic basis of Y-linked dwarfism in cichlids pursuing alternative reproductive tactics
  7. IUCN Red List — Lamprologus callipterus "Maswa"