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The
History Of Tropheus
by Fredrik Hagblom
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.

Tropheus moorii "Mpulungu"
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 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.
Tropheus moorii, the begining
The first time it was encountered by scientists
was towards the end of the 17th century when J.S. Moore made one of
his many expeditions to the lake. During his expedition in the years
1895-96 he was collecting fish in the southern parts of the lake between
Kinyamkolo and Mbity Rocks (Zambia) when he came across a fish that
he had never seen before. It had an extremely blunt forehead and a very
large amount of rays in its dorsal fin. The anal fin also had the largest
amount of rays found so far in an African cichlid. It was dark brown
and had a large yellow spot behind each pectoral fin. These fish where
pickled and later on sent to George Albert Boulenger at the British
Museum who made the scientific description of them.
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The fish that was examined by Boulenger
was a holding female and it was the first ever caught mouth brooder
of Lake Tanganyika. Up to this point the scientists believed that
there possibly were only substrate brooders in the lake. Since
it was the first mouth brooder found it was given the name Tropheus
from the Greek word Trophos which means to "foster"
or "bring up". In honour of the person that had found
the fish it was given the latinification of the name Moore resulting
in Tropheus moorii.
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.
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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 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.

Tropheus duboisi "Maswa"
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.

Tropheus brichardi "Ujiji"
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.

Tropheus sp. "Ikola"
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