Taxonomy & naming
Aulonocara sp. "Pyramid" is not a formally described species. It has no binomial scientific name, no describing author, no year of publication, and no entry in Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes, because no taxonomist has yet published a description of it. It is an informal taxon recognised in the field literature, principally through the work of Ad Konings in his Malawi cichlid books and on the Cichlid Room Companion, and catalogued on the malawi.si species database. The placeholder name follows the standard convention for undescribed Malawi cichlids: the genus Aulonocara, the abbreviation "sp.", and an informal trade tag in quotation marks. Konings places it firmly within Aulonocara despite its unusual proportions, because it carries the genus's diagnostic enlarged cephalic sensory pores — the widened lateral-line canals of the head that define the peacocks. In overall shape it resembles a small Aulonocara brevinidus, an elongate sand-dwelling peacock, but it differs in its proportionally larger eye and longer snout. Because it is so rarely observed, much of its biology remains unknown, and until a formal revision is published no authority or date should ever be attached to it.
Morphology
This is an elongate peacock, distinctly slimmer than the deep-bodied yellow and blue peacocks of the hobby, and it is distinguished by a combination of features: a very large eye, a long snout, and a flat lower-body profile. It reaches about 4.5 in in total length. The body recalls a small Aulonocara brevinidus, and the surest way to separate the two is the eye and snout — the Pyramid form has a proportionally larger eye and a longer snout than brevinidus. The head, as in all Aulonocara, carries the enlarged sensory pores that mark the genus and confirm its placement among the peacocks. Because the fish is so seldom seen, fine details of its coloration and of any sexual dimorphism are not well documented; it is presumed to follow the general peacock pattern of more strongly coloured males, but this has not been recorded in detail.
Habitat
Aulonocara sp. "Pyramid" is an open-sand peacock. It has been observed over sandy bottoms, often mixed in with foraging schools of other Aulonocara — alongside Aulonocara maylandi at Luwala Reef and Aulonocara kandeense at Kande Island. Its documented distribution spans Kande Island, Luwala Reef, and the southeastern arm of Lake Malawi, a scattered set of localities rather than a single reef. The water across this range is the warm, alkaline, well-buffered medium typical of Lake Malawi's open sandy zones. Beyond these few observations, little is recorded about its preferred depth or microhabitat, because the fish is encountered only rarely and tends to be seen amid the schools of commoner, more conspicuous peacocks rather than on its own.
Feeding
Aulonocara sp. "Pyramid" carries the enlarged cephalic sensory pores that define the peacock genus, the widened lateral-line canals used by these fish to detect invertebrates buried in the sand — so it can be assumed to be a sand-sifting invertivore in the genus mould, hovering above the substrate and listening through its head pores for buried prey before darting down to take a mouthful of sand. Its feeding behaviour has not, however, been directly documented: the fish is so rarely observed that its actual foraging habits remain unknown. The honest statement is that its anatomy places it among the sand-sifting peacocks, but that this has not been confirmed by observation in the wild.
Mating
The mating and social behaviour of Aulonocara sp. "Pyramid" are unknown. The fish is seen only occasionally, usually as scattered individuals mixed into the foraging schools of other peacocks rather than as a recognisable lek of territory-holding males, and no courtship, territoriality, or social structure has been documented for it. By analogy with the rest of the genus it would be expected to be polygynous and lek-like, with no pair bond and with colour-holding males visited by ripe females, but none of this has been observed and recorded for this particular form. It is one of the genuine blanks in the natural history of the lake's peacocks.
Breeding
Like all Lake Malawi haplochromines, Aulonocara sp. "Pyramid" is understood to be a maternal mouthbrooder, in which the female takes the eggs into her mouth immediately after laying and broods them there until the fry are free-swimming, with no male or post-release parental care. Beyond that genus-level certainty, however, its breeding biology is entirely undocumented: spawning sites, clutch size, and brooding period have never been described, because breeding individuals are essentially never seen. The form has never been kept or bred in captivity, so there are no aquarium accounts to fill the gap either. The reasonable expectation is that it spawns over sand in the general peacock manner, but this remains an inference rather than an observation.
In the aquarium
Aulonocara sp. "Pyramid" is not an aquarium fish. It has never been exported for the hobby, it is very rarely observed even in the wild, and there is no body of husbandry experience for it whatsoever. A keeper will not encounter this form for sale, and any keeping advice would be pure extrapolation from other open-sand peacocks.
If — hypothetically — the fish were ever collected and kept, its requirements would presumably follow the open-sand peacock template: a fine sand substrate of at least 2 in over which it could forage, a footprint of at least 49 in, and a few rocks for structure. Water chemistry would need to mirror Lake Malawi's sandy zones: temperature in the mid-20s Celsius, pH on the alkaline side of neutral (roughly 7.7 to 8.6), and well-buffered water. A single male with several females would be the safest arrangement, and the standard varied peacock diet — a quality cichlid pellet or flake supplemented with small frozen or live invertebrates, with fatty foods avoided to prevent bloat — would apply. But all of this is theoretical; in practice this is a fish of the open lake that aquarists do not keep.
Conservation
Aulonocara sp. "Pyramid" has not been evaluated by the IUCN, and as an undescribed form without a formal scientific name it has no Red List assessment of any kind — no status, no category, no published criteria. So little is known about the fish that even a basic picture of its abundance is lacking: it is recorded from a scattered handful of localities — Kande Island, Luwala Reef, and the southeastern arm — and is described as very rarely observed. It has never been collected for the trade, so it faces no pressure from aquarium demand. The honest position is simply that it is unassessed and very poorly known, that its true range and abundance are uncertain, and that no fabricated conservation status should ever be attached to it.