Aulonocara jacobfreibergi "Mazinzi Reef"Butterfly peacock
Aulonocara jacobfreibergi (Boadzulu Island, Cape Maclear, Chilumba, Chirwa Island, Chitande Island, Domwe Island, Hongi Island, Makokola Reef, Mara Rocks, Masimbwe Island, Mazinzi Reef, Mumbo Island, Otter Point, Ruarwe, Thumbi East Island, Tsano Rock, Undu Reef)
Mazinzi Reef — mah-ZEEN-zee REEF (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 jacobfreibergi account →Specific to Mazinzi Reef
- 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 jacobfreibergi.
The Mazinzi Reef population
Aulonocara jacobfreibergi "Mazinzi Reef" is the Mazinzi Reef population of Aulonocara jacobfreibergi, 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 jacobfreibergi, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Mazinzi Reef fish at malawi.si →
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.
Full Aulonocara jacobfreibergi account →Sources
- malawi.si — Aulonocara jacobfreibergi "Mazinzi Reef"
- FishBase — Aulonocara jacobfreibergi
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Aulonocara jacobfreibergi (species record, spid 16630)
- malawi.si (Stuart M. Grant / M.K. Oliver Malawi cichlid database) — Aulonocara jacobfreibergi location variants
- Cichlid Room Companion — Aulonocara jacobfreibergi (public species page)
- GBIF — Aulonocara jacobfreibergi (Johnson, 1974)
- IUCN Red List — Aulonocara jacobfreibergi "Mazinzi Reef"