Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Aulonocara saulosi

Aulonocara saulosi "Masimbwe Island"

Masimbwe Island — mah-SEEM-bweh 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 saulosi account →

Specific to Masimbwe 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 saulosi.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2018
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size3.6 in9.2 cm standard length
Temperature72–82 °F22–28 °C
pH7.7–8.6alkaline
Depth23–131 ft7–40 m
DietSand-sifting benthic invertivore
BreedingMaternal mouthbrooder (ovophile)small — roughly a few dozen to ~60 eggs
Sexual dimorphismYesOnly mature males develop the dark steel-blue nuptial colour and green/blue face plus a black submarginal dorsal band; females and juveniles stay drab brown.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Masimbwe Island population

Aulonocara saulosi "Masimbwe Island" is the Masimbwe Island population of Aulonocara saulosi, 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 saulosi, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

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

About the species

Aulonocara saulosi is one of the sand-dwelling "peacock" cichlids endemic to Lake Malawi, described in 1987 from the lake's south-eastern shore near Masinje. Like the rest of its genus it hunts by holding still over open sand and listening with the enlarged sensory pores that honeycomb its lower jaw, lunging when a buried invertebrate stirs. It is among the more subdued peacocks: breeding males turn a dark steel blue rather than the electric gold or red of the trade favourites, with a green-tinged face in the northern populations that gives the fish its widely used aquarium label, "green face." Most of those trade names attach to a specific reef rather than the species as a whole, because saulosi varies in colour from one population to the next around the lake.

Full Aulonocara saulosi account →

Sources

  1. malawi.si — Aulonocara saulosi "Masimbwe Island"
  2. FishBase — Aulonocara saulosi (Greenface aulonocara)
  3. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Aulonocara saulosi (species record; holotype SMF 21149)
  4. GBIF — Aulonocara saulosi Meyer, Riehl & Zetzsche, 1987
  5. malawi.si (Stuart Grant / M.K. Oliver database) — Aulonocara saulosi 'Likoma Island'
  6. malawicichlids.com (M.K. Oliver) — Summary of Meyer, Riehl & Zetzsche (1987), Aulonocara revision