Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Neolamprologus lemairii

Lamprologus lemairii "Mamalesa Island"

Mamalesa Island — mah-mah-LEH-sah EYE-land (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 lemairii account →

Specific to Mamalesa Island

  • 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 lemairii.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2025
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size10 in25 cm total length
Temperature73–81 °F23–27 °C
pH7.3–8.5alkaline
Depth3–98 ft1–30 m
DietExclusive piscivore; ambush-hunts small fish and cichlid juveniles by thanatosis (feigning death) and sudden lunge
Breedingcave/crevice substrate spawner100–150 fry
Sexual dimorphismYesMales grow noticeably larger (females roughly one-third smaller); males have somewhat longer fins; no reliable external color difference — sexing by eye is unreliable
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Mamalesa Island population

Lamprologus lemairii "Mamalesa Island" is the Mamalesa Island population of Lamprologus lemairii, a geographic colour form from the Tanzania coast of Lake Tanganyika in the central part of the lake. It is the same species as Lamprologus lemairii, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Mamalesa Island fish at tanganyika.si →

About the species

Neolamprologus lemairii is a stout, marbled predator of Lake Tanganyika that hunts by doing almost nothing. Mottled grey-brown and built low to the floor, it settles onto sand or wedges among rocks and lies there motionless — a posture so convincingly limp that small fish drift in to inspect what looks like a corpse, only to be inhaled in a single lunge. Among the lake's lamprologine cichlids it is one of the largest and most thoroughly piscivorous, a sit-and-wait ambush specialist whose whole biology, from its cryptic coloration to its sedentary temperament, is organized around the strike.

Full Neolamprologus lemairii account →

Sources

  1. tanganyika.si — Lamprologus lemairii "Mamalesa Island"
  2. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — lemairii, Lamprologus (current status: valid as Neolamprologus lemairii, Boulenger 1899)
  3. FishBase — Lamprologus lemairii (Boulenger, 1899)
  4. GBIF — Lamprologus lemairii occurrence and taxonomy
  5. Takahashi & Koblmüller (2011), International Journal of Evolutionary Biology — The Adaptive Radiation of Cichlid Fish in Lake Tanganyika (uses L. lemairii as the piscivore skull exemplar)
  6. Wagner, McIntyre et al. (2009), Functional Ecology — Diet predicts intestine length in Lake Tanganyika's cichlid fishes (L. lemairii as piscivore)
  7. IUCN Red List — Lamprologus lemairii "Mamalesa Island"