Shell-dweller

About

Found only at Bwassa on the Congolese shore of Lake Tanganyika, Lamprologus meleagris is one of the more localized shell-dwellers in the entire Tanganyika cichlid lineup. In the wild it occupies sparse shell beds at low densities, relying on empty snail shells as shelter and spawning sites. The breeding arrangement is unusual even by shell-dweller standards: females are compact enough to retreat fully inside a shell, but males are too large to follow, so they fertilize the eggs by releasing milt into the shell opening from outside. It works, but it gives you some idea of the size difference you are dealing with within a pair. For all its small stature, this fish punches well above its weight in the aggression department. It is particularly combative toward other species, and that tendency ramps up noticeably when it is fed a rich diet of meaty foods like bloodworm. A single male will actively try to assert dominance over any rivals in the tank, so most keepers are better off working with a single bonded pair rather than trying to run a colony. Kept correctly, this is a rewarding intermediate-level species with a fascinating reproductive strategy that never gets old to watch.