Cichlid hunting strategies

Trickery and deceipt in the fish world

In terms of fooling prey, cichlid specialist Ken McKaye finds the tactics of Nimbochromis livingstonii one of the most interesting.

This is a fish that plays dead: it swims along its side and looks like a rotten carcass. When an unsuspecting fish arrives to scavenge on this apparently easy meal, it in turn gets attacked and eaten.

Another cichlid, Aristochromis christyi, pretends to be sick. It swims in a water column and starts shaking and flittering like a sick fish to attract its prey. Other fish do not realize they should be wary of such a predator.

Yet another actor is Dimidiochromis compressiceps, a long, slender fish standing head-on among Vallisneria seaweeds, pretending to be one of the strands.

The Buccochromis heterotaenia hunts in packs like wolves.

Then there's the “upside-down fish”, Tyrannochromis macrostoma. It deceives other fish with its skin-colouring. Most fishes are light on the underside, so that they are difficult to see from below, against the light sky, and dark on top, to make them difficult to see against the dark bottom. But this fish is light on top and dark on the bottom. When it approaches prey, it suddenly turns around and seems to disappear.


Some species do not hunt for a whole prey. They are satisfied with a mere bite.

Genyochromis mento bites pieces of fins off other fish.

Corematodus shiranus looks similar to cichlids of the genus Oreochromis, making it easy for it to swim among the latter. When the predator gets close enough, it scrapes a few scales off its victim and eats them.

“Baby-eaters” ram mothers who have offspring in their mouths. There are various species that have different shapes of nose, and specialize in attacking from different directions. One of them is Caprichromis orthognathus, that attacks a mouth-breeding mother from below or behind, so making the victim spit the offspring out of her mouth.