Derives from the markings just behind the gill plate, although this marking is observed to extend onto the plate itself. This marking is supposed to display the Greek letter for alpha which I cannot display as HTML will not recognise it. It looks very similar to our letter 'a' though.

5 cm.

From Killidata - D = 12·33, A = 14, D/A = -1, ll = 25·67

Chromaphyosemion

• Aphyosemion (Chromaphyosemion) sp. No.2

Populations

• Cap Estérias
• Owendo (area of southern Libreville)
• Santa Clara (GJS 00/34)
• Cap Santa Clara (DNA 01)
• LEC 93 / 26
• sp. No.2

- http://home8.swipnet.se/%7Ew-86183/alpha.htm Alf & Anitas site.

• GJS 00 / 34 - Santa Clara - Material kindly sent by Mogens Juhl "In the shady part of the stream we found A.striatum, E.singa and more E.sexfasciatus and a lot of other sp. and finally a female A.alpha.
  We searched the stream quite a long way and suddenly came to a part that was much wider and with a lot of plants in parts of the stream.
  Although the plants were submerse they were not aquatic plants, just plants that had been covered with water.
  Here we found lots of A.alpha. Every time lifting the foot from the plants one could immediately collect some A.alpha in the footprint among the plants. After a short time walking around these plants we had more than enough of this species.
  The most interesting about this population, despite it seems to be a little more pretty than the earlier introduced populations with much yellow to orange in the fins, it also seem to be a lot easier to reproduce. The pH was very high, almost 7, which makes the demands for this population much easier to fulfil.
  Breeding this population one can easily get quite even numbers of males and females, which is much different with the other populations that often only gives males, or females, but not both.
  Water temperature was 25°C, pH 6·85 and conductivity 54 microseimens".
• DNA 01 - Cap Santa Clara - Collected by Nevin Aspinwall in July-August 2001.
• sp. No.2 - Cap Estérias

17·1 km north of the airport of Cap Estérias.

Fairly restricted to the Cap Estérias & Cap Santa Clara areas.

It is worth noting that the above biotope photos show water which is less brown & contains a high degree of algae.
Sympatric sp. include A.australe & Ep.sexfasciatus.
Huber (Killidata) considers the habitat to be coastal fringes which contain either little salt content or none at all. Also mentioned is their being found in primary forest but on rare instances in savannah biotopes.
Inhabits clear running (slow) water over a sand base. Depth of water recorded at 30 cm. Water temperature recorded at 22-32°C

First discovered by Mersseman in 1971.
Collected by Fourdrinier in 1988 16·3 km from Libreville airport but the direction is not recorded in my reference material (Killidata).
Collected in 1993 at location LEC 93 / 26 by Legros et al., Gabon.
Described by Huber in August 1998. Article references to the first description have been seen as 1999, but this is an error & probably refers to a BKA translation of the original description.
First distributed in 1996 as Chromaphyosemion sp. No.2. Collected by Wolfgang Eberl.
Collected by Mogens Juhl et al. in 2000 from Santa Clara.

Young fish are reported (Killidata) to take 8 weeks to sex out & take 6 months to reach maturity.

An extensive article with colour photographs appears on the DKG site. This text is in German. http://www.exotics.net/dkg/steckbriefe/chromaphyosemion/alp/alpha.pdf