Redbreast tilapia facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Redbreast tilapia |
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The redbreast tilapia (Coptodon rendalli) is a type of fish that belongs to the Cichlidae family. You can find this fish in many places across the southern part of Africa. It naturally lives in freshwater lakes and wet, marshy areas. In South Africa, people often call it the redbreast kurper.
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Where Redbreast Tilapia Live
This fish lives in the water systems of the upper Congo River and the Kasai River. You can also find it in large lakes like Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi. It swims in the Zambezi River and along the coast where the Zambezi meets the ocean, all the way to KwaZulu-Natal. Other homes include the Limpopo River, the Okavango River, and the Cunene River. People have also introduced these fish to other countries because they are good to eat.
What Redbreast Tilapia Look Like
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The redbreast tilapia can grow quite large, up to 45 centimeters (about 18 inches) long. It can weigh as much as 2.5 kilograms (about 5.5 pounds). Its body is tall and flat from side to side. The height of its body is almost half of its total length. Its head is also quite big, about one-third of its length.
The top of its head is usually rounded, but in older, larger fish, it might look a bit hollow. Its mouth has short, wide, and thick teeth that have two points. The lower part of its throat jaw is as wide as it is long. It has special structures called gill rakers, which help it filter food from the water.
The top of the fish's head and back are olive-green. Its sides are lighter in color. Like other fish in the Coptodon group, its chest and belly often have a red color. You might see a few faint lines along its sides. Its top fin, called the dorsal fin, is olive-green with a red edge. It also has white or gray spots on the softer part of this fin.
How Redbreast Tilapia Behave
Redbreast tilapia usually live near river banks, in curved oxbow lakes, and in swamps. They prefer places with lots of plants and calm water that doesn't flow too fast. These fish are very tough and can live in a wide range of temperatures, from 8 to 41 degrees Celsius (46 to 106 degrees Fahrenheit). They can even survive in slightly salty water, like brackish water, with a bit of salt in it.
Young redbreast tilapia eat tiny floating organisms called plankton. Adult fish, like all Coptodon species, mostly eat plants such as algae and larger water plants. They also snack on insects and small crustaceans.
Classification and Discovery
The redbreast tilapia was first described in 1897 by a Belgian-British fish expert named George Albert Boulenger. He first named it Chromis rendalli. Later, it was placed in the group called Tilapia, specifically a subgroup called Coptodon. In early 2013, this subgroup Coptodon was made into its own main group, or genus. The fish was named after Percy Rendall (1861-1948), a British zoologist who collected the first example of this fish from the upper Shire River in what was then British Central Africa.
