A local acquaintance of mine, Kyle Rollefstad took the following pic when working for the late Stuart Grant years ago. He set up the following display tank, as well as dove in Lion's Cove and helped collect the yellow labs shown below.
Wild Caught Labidochromis caeruleus "Lion's Cove"
- Thread starter RD.
- Start date
BTW - at the time of these photos, approx. 15 yrs ago, a wild caught "yellow lab" cost $125 US. Many people believed that this species was rare in the wild, which is untrue, they are simply found quite deep in the lake (75 ft or more) and at adult sizes of 2 1/2- 3 1/2" are difficult to catch. Kyle and his divers caught in excess of 100 yellow labs in Lion's Cove, in a single day.
Wow, nice fish. It's cool to see them straight out of the lake without any chance of being messed up like most of what you find for sale.
Fish room tour from 2015 shows some wild yellow labs starting at 1:09
Interestingly enough, most of the traits that hobbyists don't approve of, such as barring, white bellies, black masks, are actually natural traits, at least in the Lion's Cove variant. If you look closely in the pics and vid you can actually see white bellies on some of the smaller, most likely female fish, along with barring on many. The lab below was a wild male that Kyle caught during his stay, and as you can see he has black/blue on his face, along with the infamous black moustache. Poor image, but clear enough to see.
