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Chilotilapia euchilus/rhoadesi (natural-hybrid)


Chilotilapia euchilus mainly is living above the sandy bottoms in reasonable shallow water, in intermediate zones from rocks to sand and it is found in the entire lake. Chilotilapia rhoadesii is a species which is found in the entire lake in sandy, muddy environments as well in deep as in shallow waters. The fish shown here however are natural hybrids of both these species which were found on the northeastern coast in the region Lupingu-Nkanda where they live above sandbottoms.


For further information about these hybrids you can take a look at the following German articles:
      Naturhybriden aus dem Malawisee--------------------------author Thomas Lepel
      Der „Sandgrund-Euchilus“ ist eine Naturhybride!--------author Andreas Spreinat


It´s not clear to me yet what size these hybrids can reach however I expect that the males can reach about 25 cm and the females about 20 cm. In an aquarium they will probably getting bigger.


You can best keep these hybrids with multiple females in a large tank with a lot of swimming space. It is possible to keep this species together with larger mbuna.


In the lake Chilotilapia euchilus is feeding itself with invertebrates which they find on the rocks and in the sand and Chilotilapia rhoadesii is mainly feeding itself with snails. It´s also not clear to me yet what kind of food these hybrids they take in the lake, maybe a kind of mix of invertebrates and snails.
In the aquarium they are probably comfortable with any food. They will probably take everything they get offered, like spirulina pellets, mysis, artemia, cyclops and shrimp-peas mix.