Aulonocara jacobfreibergi "Chitande Island"

About the species

Aulonocara jacobfreibergi is a peacock cichlid endemic to Lake Malawi, where it lives not on the open sand of most of its genus but tucked into caves, overhangs and shaded recesses in the intermediate zone between rock and sand. Males are among the largest Aulonocara, flushed in courtship with metallic blue, red and gold and trimmed in white-edged fins, which has made the fish a fixture of the aquarium trade for half a century. It is sold under hobby names such as the 'butterfly peacock' and as a long list of geographic colour variants — 'Eureka,' 'Lemon Jake,' 'Otter Point,' 'Cape Maclear,' 'Mamela/Mamelela' — each tied to a particular reef (the older trade name 'fairy cichlid' is best avoided, as it properly belongs to the unrelated Tanganyikan Neolamprologus brichardi). Like all Aulonocara it hunts by lying still and reading the vibrations of buried invertebrates through enlarged sensory pores on its lower jaw, then lunging into the sand.