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Okay, I've done a bit of reading on this species and not come up with any answers. So here's the lowdown.

1. I bought 1 Ps.lombardoi with occasional vertical brown stripes at first (the stripes used to come and go based on stress), but now is bright yellow (I'm assuming this is a male) "He" is now about 3" long
2. Being interested in the breeding process (for personal tanks only) I bought 2 bright blue Ps.lombardoi with vertical dark blue stripes (guessing females -- I picked up two as the males are supposed to be aggressive) they are about 2" long each

Okay, now the wierd stuff...

1. One of the blues turned a cruddy brownish yellow, however the other blue is still the same.
2. The blue one had a batch of fry a few weeks ago.
3. Yesterday I noticed that my original bright yellow "male" was holding. Okay, having not done this before I looked much closer and sure enough "he" has a mouthful of fry!

So what gives? Do I really have a male doing the brooding?

Any help or advice?

Thanks!

Is the fish that is holding still yellow. females can some times take, to some extent, male colouring. This would be the most likely senario. But in saying this I have heard of male fish carrying eggs before

Josh

She's as yellow as can be and has always been yellow. It turns out it is really a "she" because she doesn't have egg spots like males have.

I have to admit, this is some of the oddest morphology I've ever seen personally. :%)

Thanks for the feedback!

is it possible that your original orange fish is a female soulosi? i know they show some barring when young sometimes.
sometimes the female kenyi will take on slight orange when holding and resemble males, but it is usually easy to tell them apart. if you really have 3 kenyi, i dont know how to explain that.

Oh, wonderful.

Pseudotropheus lombardoi is a problematic Mbuna because it possesses reversed sexual colouration. Males are usually orange yellow, females usually blue with bars. This was first covered by Warren E. Burgess way back in 1977 in TFH, in an article specifically devoted to Ps. lombardoi.

Of course, since then, new populations of lombardoi may have been discovered, in which the colour situation is even more complex. After all, nowadays no-one refers to just Pseudotropheus elongatus, rather the Ps. elongatus complex, because the taxonomic puzzles are not fully resolved. Your lombardoi may actually be from a distinct and variant population, with variant behaviour as well as colour. In which case, we'll all be referring to the "lombardoi complex" in future until the taxonomists sort out which fish is really which, a task that looks set to keep taxonomists in lifelong jobs for several decades yet!

This illustrates how important it is to have provenance with Mbuna. Collection data is vital if they're wild caught, and if they're captive bred, you also need collection data on the ancestors. That way, you stand a chance of finding out more about your fish once the taxonomists have had their fun

Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Excellent response! Thank you for the great writeup!

By the way as far as I can tell she delivered 5 healthy fry and is eating like a horse again. However, my other "blue" female is now sulking in a corner. They've both exhibited that sulking behavior before and they've both had fry so I'm now eagerly hoping for a third batch!

Thanks again!