Lake Managua
Lake Managua (Xolotlán), ~1,040 km² in the Nicaraguan depression, draining south to Lake Nicaragua via the Río Tipitapa. Shallow and, today, heavily impacted by the city on its shore, it still carries a Central-American cichlid assemblage — Amphilophus, Parachromis and relatives — and is ringed by volcanic crater lakes that hold their own endemic fishes (Bussing 1998).
- Maximum depth
- 98 ft
- Length
- 36 miles
- Mixing regime
- Polymictic
- Basin
- San Juan basin (via the Río Tipitapa to Lake Nicaragua)
- Countries
- Nicaragua
Where every species has been recorded
20 cichlid species across 9 genera have been georeferenced in the lake, drawn from 341 field and museum records. Switch to satellite imagery, or pick a single species to see exactly where it lives.
Occurrence records: GBIF.org (Global Biodiversity Information Facility). Each point is a georeferenced observation or specimen; positions carry the source dataset's own coordinate precision.
Sources
Every number on this page is traceable to peer-reviewed research.
- GBIF.org (2026). GBIF Occurrence Download — Cichlidae, African rift lakes. Global Biodiversity Information Facility, www.gbif.org. link
A shoreline of separate worlds
Lake Managua does not have one habitat but a mosaic of them, and the boundaries are sharp. A cichlid adapted to grazing algae off boulders may never cross the few metres of open sand to the next reef — which is exactly why so many species here live nowhere else on Earth.
Mapped habitats
Surveyed habitat data for this lake is not loaded yet.