Lake Zirahuén is a small endorheic lake in the Municipality of Santa Clara del Cobre

Santa Clara del Cobre

Santa Clara del Cobre is a town and municipality located in the center of the state of Michoacán, Mexico, 18 km from Pátzcuaro and 79 km from the state capital of Morelia...

, Michoacán

Michoacán

Michoacán officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Michoacán de Ocampo is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 113 municipalities and its capital city is Morelia...

 state of west-central Mexico.

Lake Zirahuén is a small, deep mountain lake, with a sandy bottom that is partially covered with mud.

At times Lake Zirahuén has been part of an open and continuous hydrological system formed by Lake Cuitzeo

Lake Cuitzeo

Lake Cuitzeo is a lake in central part of Mexico, in the Michoacán State. It is located at around . It has an area of 300-400 km². The lake is astatic, and the volume and level of water in the lake fluctuates frequently. It is the second largest freshwater lake in Mexico.Lake Cuitzeo lies in an...

, Lake Pátzcuaro

Lake Pátzcuaro

Lake Pátzcuaro is a lake in the municipality of Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, Mexico.The natives believe that the lake is the place where the barrier between life and death is the thinnest....

 and Lake Zirahuén, which drained into the Lerma River

Lerma River

The Lerma Santiago River is Mexico's second longest river. It is a river in west-central Mexico that begins in Mexican Plateau at an altitude over above sea level, and ends where it empties into Lake Chapala, Mexico's largest lake, near Guadalajara, Jalisco...

. Today, like lakes Cuitzeo and Pátzcuaro, it is a closed basin, although ecologists consider it a sub-basin of the Lerma-Chapala basin.

The Zirahuén Allotica (Allotoca meeki

Allotoca meeki

Allotoca meeki, commonly known as the Zirahuen Allotica or the tiro de Zirahuén, is a species of fish endemic to Lake Zirahuén, a small endorheic mountain lake in Michoacán state of central Mexico....

), a Goodeid

Goodeidae

Splitfins, are a family, Goodeidae, of teleost fish endemic to Mexico and some areas of the United States. This family contains 40 species within 18 genera. The family is named after ichthyologist George Brown Goode.-Range and Geographic Distribution:...

 fish, is endemic

Endemic (ecology)

Endemism is the ecological state of being unique to a defined geographic location, such as an island, nation or other defined zone, or habitat type; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, all species of lemur are endemic to the...

to lake Zirahuén.