Aulonocara koningsi "Mbenji Island"
Mbenji Island — m-BEHN-jee 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 koningsi account →Specific to Mbenji 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 koningsi.
The Mbenji Island population
Aulonocara koningsi "Mbenji Island" is the Mbenji Island population of Aulonocara koningsi, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the south-central part of the lake. It is the same species as Aulonocara koningsi, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Mbenji Island fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Aulonocara koningsi is a small peacock cichlid found nowhere on Earth but the reefs of a single offshore island in Lake Malawi. Patrick Tawil described it in 2003 and named it for Ad Konings, the field naturalist who had done more than anyone to document Malawi's sand-dwelling peacocks. Like the rest of its genus it is a quiet sand-hunter: it cruises the thin substrate between the boulders, chin lowered, listening through enlarged sensory canals for the twitch of buried invertebrates rather than searching for them by eye. The breeding males are an electric, near-uniform blue, which is exactly why the fish reached the aquarium trade as the 'Blue Regal' or 'Mbenji' peacock long before most hobbyists could spell its describer's name.
Full Aulonocara koningsi account →Sources
- malawi.si — Aulonocara koningsi "Mbenji Island"
- FishBase — Aulonocara koningsi (Tawil, 2003), summary page (SpecCode 62427)
- FishBase — Aulonocara koningsi field-guide summary (diagnosis, coloration, biology)
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Aulonocara koningsi (species record, spid 68362)
- GBIF — Aulonocara koningsi Tawil, 2003 (species record)
- The ETYFish Project — Cichlidae (Pseudocrenilabrinae): Aulonocara / koningsi etymology