Aulonocara guentheri "Thumbi East Island"
Thumbi East Island — TOOM-bee EEST EYE-land (approx.)
The fish
How this cichlid is built, and everything about how it lives, eats and breeds, is shared with the species — this page doesn't repeat it.
Read the full Aulonocara guentheri account →Specific to Thumbi East Island
- Collection locality & coordinates
- Local coloration — best judged from the living-fish photo
- Kept as a single-provenance line, never crossed with other collection points
Care facts below are the species' — shared with Aulonocara guentheri.
The Thumbi East Island population
Aulonocara guentheri "Thumbi East Island" is the Thumbi East Island population of Aulonocara guentheri, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Aulonocara guentheri, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Thumbi East Island fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Aulonocara guentheri is a small-to-medium sand-dwelling peacock cichlid endemic to the shallow sandy floor of Lake Malawi's southeastern arm and adjoining Lake Malombe. Like all members of its genus it is a 'sonar-feeder', hovering motionless a centimetre or two above the sand and reading the faint movements of buried invertebrates through a hugely enlarged network of sensory pores in the bones of its head. Both sexes wear a wash of yellow across the lower face, and the fish travel the open sand in loose foraging parties of about ten, often mingling with other sand cichlids. Once a staple of the beach-seine catch around Senga Bay, it has been driven to the brink by overfishing and is now considered Endangered, surviving in only a single bay.
Full Aulonocara guentheri account →Sources
- malawi.si — Aulonocara guentheri "Thumbi East Island"
- Konings, A. (1995) — A review of the sand-dwelling species of the genus Aulonocara, with the description of three new species (The Cichlids Yearbook, Vol. 5: 26–36, Cichlid Press)
- FishBase — Aulonocara guentheri (Eccles, 1989)
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Aulonocara guentheri (species record; holotype BMNH 1921.9.6.221)
- malawi.si — Malawi Cichlid Species List (Stuart Grant / M.K. Oliver database)
- Eccles, D.H. & Trewavas, E. (1989) — Malawian Cichlid Fishes: The Classification of Some Haplochromine Genera ('Aulonocara Regan', pp. 138–150; original description of A. guentheri)