Three male Cyprichromis leptosoma showing off in my 240G Lake Tanganyika setup.

My colony of Cyprichromis unfortunately is in a bit of a mess, and here is how that came to be. Cyps are vastly popular in the hobby right now, but even at OCA club auctions a bag of cyps comes along only once in a while. So when one night a bag of six Cyprichromis leptosoma 'Blue Flash' that somebody had turned in as part of the BAP program was auctioned off for a very reasonable price, I could no longer resist. These fish were very small and I lost five of them, be it through predation or them getting stuck in the microfilterbags after entering the overflow boxes. Then I learned that Brad Jones, a local breeder who sells vast quantities of frontosa on Aquabid, wanted to sell his breeding colony of adult, very large Cyprichromis leptosoma 'Utinta', consisting of two males and five females. His price was more than acceptable, so I picked those guys up sight unseen. What I got were the two most gorgeous cyprichromis males I have seen so far. They were of a dark, purplish blue with bright orange tails. The colony started breeding almost immediately, and for a while I tried to catch holding females after a certain time in order to strip them, but what ever I tried, sneaking up at night, using a little fish trap, screaming and yelling at them, I could never catch one of these ultra fast fish in a tank this big with so many decorations. I also tried to catch the last Blue Flash, but didn't succeed with that either. By now it has turned out to be a male. Some time later one of the utinta males developed pop-eye and I lost him. At that stage the remaining male started chasing the females relentlessly, and I realized that I would have to expand the colony if I did not want to loose my females due to aggression.

Male Cyprichromis leptosoma 'Utinta' (Orange Tail)

When a bag of Cyprichromis leptosoma 'Utinta' BAP fish showed up at a monthly OCA meeting, I pounced on them. The males had not colored up yet, but when they did, it turned out that they had yellow tails; that is completely unlike the orange colored male I had before. I managed to identify the breeder of the yellow tailed Utintas as Brian Shrimpton, a local breeder with the most high-tech kind of fish room in existence. Brian was more than happy to swap some more of his utintas for some really nice Bolivian Rams (Mikrogeophagus altispinosus) I had available at the time, so I ended up with a sizable colony of cyps, only I had three color morphs of them in the same tank:

• Cyprichromis leptosoma 'Utinta' with orange tail
• Cyprichromis leptosoma 'Utinta' with yellow tail
• Cyprichromis leptosoma 'Blue Flash'

Strictly speaking, the fry would not be hybrids, because all fish are of the same species (Cyprichromis leptosoma). However, since I consider the preservation of biodiversity to be an important goal for people in the aquarium hobby, even the mixing of genes of different color morphs is highly undesirable for me. As a result, I would never sell or give away cyprichromis fry from this tank - not that this is a problem right now where they all seem to get eaten anyhow. As it happens, just the day before writing this I actually discovered one tiny cyp fry in one of the sumps. If it survives down there long enough, I will introduce it back into the main tank.

Male Cyprichromis leptosoma 'Utinta' (Yellow Tail)

Last but not least, at the time of writing this, the yellow tailed and orange tailed varieties of utintas do not seem to be recognized as separate color morphs. To confuse matters further there is also a color morph of blue tailed utintas, and you can read about blue tailed and yellow tailed Cyprichromis leptosoma 'Utinta', e.g. on Cichlid-forum. However, the orange tailed males are simply mixed in with the yellow tailed ones. You can clearly see in the pictures that the photos taken by Steve C. and Caner Gündüz show orange tailed males, but are labeled as 'Yellow-tailed male' although they look clearly different from the fish shown in the photos taken by Neil Coscarelli, Marc Elieson, and Kenji Takahasi. If fish are sold under the same name, it signals to people that interbreeding them is ok. The orange and yellow tailed males of the species Cyprichromis leptosoma Utinta are both stunningly beautiful and it seems worth preserving their differences. If those got lost due to interbreeding, it would be a shame.

Sharp photos of cyprichromis are ridiculously hard to get - they are lightning fast and never stand still - but I reckon there are at least a couple of keepers in my gallery. 🙂