Tropheus moorii "Kalubale"
Kalubale — kah-loo-BAH-leh (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 Tropheus moorii account →Specific to Kalubale
- 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 Tropheus moorii.
The Kalubale population
Tropheus moorii "Kalubale" is the Kalubale population of Tropheus moorii, a geographic colour form from the Zambia coast of Lake Tanganyika in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Tropheus moorii, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Kalubale fish at tanganyika.si →
About the species
Tropheus moorii, the blunthead cichlid, is a stocky, algae-grazing cichlid found only along the rocky shores of Lake Tanganyika in East Africa. It is famous less for any single appearance than for the opposite: across the lake it splinters into well over a hundred geographically isolated color forms, a living textbook of how populations diverge when they cannot mix. Hardy in the wild but notoriously demanding in a tank, it is a fish that rewards keepers who respect its strict vegetarian gut and its volatile social life.
Full Tropheus moorii account →Sources
- tanganyika.si — Tropheus moorii 'Kalubale'
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes (California Academy of Sciences) — Tropheus moorii
- FishBase — Tropheus moorii (Blunthead cichlid)
- GBIF — Tropheus moorii Boulenger, 1898
- Sefc et al., Sexual dimorphism and population divergence in the genus Tropheus — Frontiers in Zoology
- Kerschbaumer & Sturmbauer et al., Delineating species along shifting shorelines: Tropheus from the southern subbasin of Lake Tanganyika
- Raeymaekers et al., Contrasting parasite communities among allopatric colour morphs of the Lake Tanganyika cichlid Tropheus — BMC
- IUCN Red List — Tropheus moorii "Kalubale"