Chilotilapia euchilus

[BlueDempsey]

Here's another beauty Malawi. Pheewwwwiiiiitttt!

Definitely a good kisser with the pursed lips. Has really striking colours. Only catch, you got to have patience to wait for the colours to change. The female unfortunately stays dull khaki brown with black stripe across.

Wahh,... fish like these make me wanna get a few more tanks! And ask KissBang's favourite question, "you got or not".

[BlueDempsey]

Are there any Malawi guys who keep large fish like these? Wait for them to show their colour? I guess CC never get orders of a 100 and above so he doesnt order. But these lips are real and colours are real. No hybrid!

[RazorBlade]

Hi BlueDempsey,

Yup, those thick lips are pretty prized Malawi Haps.

The "thick lips" variety of Malawi Haps ... there's a catch:

Apparently, these thick lips are developed due to their natural habitat: they use their heavily cushioned lips to scrape their food off sand/stone/rock/etc. If kept (& bred) in captivity and fed pellets, they will suppress (and eventually lose) this beautiful physical trait over several generations.

There are other variety of "thick lip" Malawi Haps - e.g. the popular and quite easily available Cyrtocara moorii aka "Malawi Dolphin" (surprise surprise!).

The only way you are gonna get "thick lips" is with cichlids having very close ties to their wild-caught brethen ... you can probably 'simulate' their natural feeding patterns but you'll probably end up with a 6-footer biotope setup with 3-5 fishes + lots of lights + lots of bugs in the sandbed.

Thx for sharing!

[EzieG]

one more nice 'thick lip' malawi hap is Placidochromis Milomo - Super VC-10

here is the pic:

[kevkoi]

VC-10 are available very readily.... trouble is they come without the thick lips. Bluedempsey, u want Placidochromis milomo? This one the colour damn nice..

[BlueDempsey]

Aiyo,... I dare to ask to see only. To buy I have to get another tank. Besides, I have introduced more plants into my Malawi tank. Wanna die,... siao... but what to do. The fish look more healthy and colourful after that!

Hehe... if colour is good,... you never know, i upgrade to 5 or 6 ft tank!

[BlueDempsey]

Sometimes the colour takes damn long to come out. So we look at the fish for a long time before they change. If you get the female, no colour change. So the colour of the mi-lomo got or not? ANd how much would it cost?