Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Aulonocara stuartgranti

Aulonocara stuartgranti "Mitande Reef (Rocks)"

Mitande Reef (Rocks) — mee-TAHN-deh REEF ROKS (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 Mitande Reef (Rocks)

  • 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.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2018
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size4.6 in11.8 cm total length
Temperature75–82 °F24–28 °C
pH7.7–8.6alkaline
Depth16 ft5 m
DietSand-sifting benthic invertivore
BreedingMaternal mouthbrooder~5-50 eggs (scales with female size)
Sexual dimorphismYesStrong — dominant males metallic blue with orange/red/yellow (varies by population); females and subordinate males cryptic grey-brown. Males also carry anal-fin egg-spots.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Mitande Reef (Rocks) population

Aulonocara stuartgranti "Mitande Reef (Rocks)" is the Mitande Reef (Rocks) population of Aulonocara stuartgranti, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Aulonocara stuartgranti, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Mitande Reef (Rocks) fish at malawi.si →

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

  1. malawi.si — Aulonocara stuartgranti "Mitande Reef (Rocks)"
  2. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Aulonocara stuartgranti (species record)
  3. FishBase — Aulonocara stuartgranti (Meyer & Riehl, 1985) summary
  4. GBIF — Aulonocara stuartgranti occurrence records
  5. malawi.si (Stuart M. Grant / M.K. Oliver, The Cichlid Fishes of Lake Malaŵi) — Aulonocara and its location variants
  6. Ad Konings — Malawi Cichlids in their Natural Habitat (Cichlid Press; foremost authority on Lake Malawi Aulonocara and their geographic colour forms)