Aulonocara stuartgranti "Chilumba"
Aulonocara stuartgranti (Border, Chesese, Chewere, Chiloelo, Chilucha Reef, Chilumba, Chimwalani Reef, Chinuni, Chiofu, Chirwa Island, Chisanga Point, Chitimba Bay, Chiwindi, Cobwe, Domwe Island, Gallireya Reef, Gome, Hai Reef, Hongi Island, Hora Mhango, Kande Island, Lions Cove, Liutche, Londo Bay, Lundo, Lundo Island, Luwala Reef, Maison Reef, Malopa, Mara Rocks, Masinje, Mbowe Island, Mdoka, Mdowa, Metangula, Mitande Reef (Rocks), Mkondowe, Mundola Point, Nametumbwe, Ngara, Nkhata Bay, Nkhungu Reef, Ntekete, Ntumba, Ruarwe, Sanga, Tchinga Reef, Thumbi West Island, Tumbi Point, Undu Reef, Usisya, Wikihi)
Chilumba — chee-LOOM-bah (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 stuartgranti account →Specific to Chilumba
- 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 stuartgranti.
The Chilumba population
The Chilumba Peacock is the Aulonocara stuartgranti population collected near the port town of Chilumba in northern Malawi. Males display orange-yellow to orange flanks with a metallic blue head — a coloration that has made this form a consistent presence in the Malawi peacock cichlid hobby, prized both for its vivid appearance and for the fact that its precise origin is well-documented in the field literature.
Colour reference: living Chilumba fish at cichlidae.com →
About the species
Aulonocara stuartgranti, known in the hobby as Grant's peacock, is a maternal mouthbrooding cichlid endemic to Lake Malawi and one of the most familiar faces in the African-cichlid hobby. It is the archetypal "peacock": a sand-and-rock fish that hovers a few millimeters above the bottom and detects buried invertebrates with the enlarged lateral-line canals pitting its lower jaw — a sixth-sense feeding system confirmed in the lab on this very species. Across the lake it splits into dozens of vividly distinct geographic colour forms, from the orange-tailed Ngara "flametail" to the blue Usisya and Cobue, which is exactly why it is both beloved and a perennial hybridization headache for keepers.
Full Aulonocara stuartgranti account →Sources
- Konings, A. & Stauffer, J.R. Jr. (1988). Original description of Aulonocara stuartgranti
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Aulonocara stuartgranti
- Schwalbe, A.M.B., Bassett, D.K. & Webb, J.F. (2012). Feeding in the dark: lateral-line-mediated prey detection in Aulonocara stuartgranti. J. Exp. Biol. 215: 2060–2071
- Konings, A. (2016). Malawi Cichlids in their Natural Habitat, 5th ed. Cichlid Press
- IUCN Red List — Aulonocara stuartgranti (2018)
- FishBase — Aulonocara stuartgranti
- Cichlid Room Companion — Aulonocara stuartgranti
- Chavula, G. et al. (2023). Threats to Lake Malawi biodiversity. Fisheries Research