Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Aulonocara kandeense

Aulonocara kandeense "Kande Island"

Kande Island — KAHN-deh 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 kandeense account →

Specific to Kande 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 kandeense.

IUCNCRITICALLY ENDANGERED · 2018
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size3.1 in7.8 cm standard length
Temperature75–79 °F24–26 °C
pH7.5–8.3alkaline
Depth10–33 ft3–10 m
DietSand-sifting benthic invertivore (insect larvae, crustaceans, snails)
BreedingMaternal mouthbrooder (polygynous, lek-spawning)large for its size — ~70-100, occasionally >100 small fry
Sexual dimorphismYesStrong: dominant males dark blue-black with a white-to-pale-blue head/dorsal blaze and yellow anal egg-spots; females smaller and silvery (unlike the dull brown-grey females of most Aulonocara).
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Kande Island population

Aulonocara kandeense "Kande Island" is the Kande Island population of Aulonocara kandeense, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the central part of the lake. It is the same species as Aulonocara kandeense, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Kande Island fish at malawi.si →

About the species

Aulonocara kandeense is a sand-sifting peacock cichlid found at exactly one place on Earth: the rocky-sand margins of Kande Island, off the central-western shore of Lake Malawi. Breeding males trade the warm gold most peacocks wear for something stranger and darker — a near-black, deep-blue body crossed by a clean white-to-pale-blue blaze running nose to dorsal — the look that earned it the aquarium-trade name "Blue Orchid." That single-island confinement is also its undoing: prized by collectors and easy to net at its shallow breeding depth, the wild population has swung from a couple of thousand fish to fewer than twenty-five and back, and the IUCN now lists it as Critically Endangered.

Full Aulonocara kandeense account →

Sources

  1. malawi.si — Aulonocara kandeense "Kande Island"
  2. FishBase — Aulonocara kandeense (Blue orchid aulonocara)
  3. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Aulonocara maylandi kandeensis / Aulonocara kandeense (Tawil & Allgayer 1987; holotype MNHN 1986-0335)
  4. The ETYFish Project — Cichlidae (Pseudocrenilabrinae): Aulonocara kandeense etymology
  5. malawi.si — Aulonocara kandeense 'Kande Island' (M.K. Oliver / Konings species & locality database)
  6. Tawil, P. & Allgayer, R. 1987. Aulonocara maylandi kandeensis ssp. nov. Cybium 11(2): 160-167 (original description)