"The History Of Tropheus"




The Tropheus species from Lake Tanganyika is almost mythical among cichlid keepers. They are fragile, aggressive, expensive, need a special diet and easily get sick and die on you. The female holds her fry for an exceptionally long time and since the eggs are the largest among the mouth brooders each spawn is also among the smallest. Personally I believe that you shouldn’t let your self get scared off by all these rumours. If you just plan everything well you will be able to keep this species just as well as the other African cichlids.It is a beautiful fish and it is found in an amazingly large amount of varitys all over the lake. It is also a fish that gives great entertainment value. Personally I can sit for hours watching my Tropheus trying to figure out all the little social intrigues that goes on in the tank.

Tropheus showed up in the fish-keeping hobby for the first time in Germany in the mid seventies and very soon after that also in the US. But let's go back in time to when people first got in contact with this extraordinary fish.








Tropheus moorii

Tropheus live along rocky beaches all over Lake Tanganyika in east Africa where it is endemic. Most of the variants prefer a depth of 0,5-1 meter so we are talking very shallow waters except for the duboisi which is always found at a deeper level. The fish has probably been known by the locals for several 1000 years and has been and still is consumed as food on occasion. The reason it hasn't been a major success at the dinner table is probably because it is small and hard to catch since it mostly lives very close to some kind of cavity among the rocks where it tends to hide as soon as it feels threatened.




Annectens, was it different?

In the year 1900 a type of Tropheus that looked a little different was found near the town of Albertville. Again the specimen was sent to Boulenger and he gave it the name Tropheus annectens.However Boulenger didn't feel good about the description he had made and wasn't sure about it. 1946 Max Poll investigated the very same fish more carefully and came to the conclusion that the differences between what Boulenger had called a Tropheus moorii and a Tropheus annectens was not enough to separate the two. He felt that the annectens had to stay in the same group as moorii until more information about their differences were collected.





The duboisi

It then took up to the year 1957 until the next type of Tropheus was found. This time it was a scientist by the name of J.Dubois that found a species by the village of Bempa in the northern parts of the lake. Strangely they found it at a considerable depth while looking for completely other types of fishes. This variant was found along a 300 meter line of rocks and at a depth of 3 to 12 meters. There was an orange variant of Tropheus moori at the same spot but the new variant was found much deeper and looked different in a number of ways. This put together made it quite clear that they had found a new type of Tropheus. The differences between this one and the ones found before was that it had a much more rounded




Tropheus duboisi

mouth and the base of its teeth was covered by its lips which was not the case in the Tropheus moorii. The mouth was also located more towards the front of the head and not pointing downwards as on the T. moorii. The head was covered with something that looked a little like a blue "wax coating" and the fry did not have the normal vertical stripes but was instead covered with fine white spots. Some behavioural differences were noted as well. In the wild this variant seemed to move around by it self or in pairs and not in groups like the T. moori. The new variant was sent to Marlier who described it and gave it the name Tropheus duboisi after J. Dubois who had first located the species.






The brichardi and the polli

In 1975 Nelissen & Thys Van Den Audenaerde found enough evidence to create the new group called Tropheus brichardi. They were named after the famous cichlid importer Pierre Brichard.In 1977 the next discovery was made when a Tropheus with a different kind of caudal fin was found at Bulu Point on the Tanzanian side of the lake. This one had a “lyre tail”, which was black with yellow along the edges. It had been caught before but was thought to be a T. moori. Now it was described by G.S. Axelrod and placed in a category of its own under the name Tropheus polli. Axelrod was able to point out a couple of ecological differences between the polli and the moorii, one being that the T. polli is found at a depth of 6-8 meters and not along the shallow rocky beaches where the moorii was located. He also noted that the T. polli had only 4 rays in its anal fin and not 5-7 as the T. moorii.

Today there are considered to be eight different types of Tropheus, moorii, brichardi, duboisi, annectens, sp."ikola", sp."black", sp."red", sp."mpimbwe". The four carrying the letters sp. (species) are yet to be described as their own species or placed back into one of the categories of the others.