Cynotilapia sp. "Elongatus Mdoka" "Mdoka"
Mdoka — m-DOH-kah (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 Cynotilapia sp. "Elongatus Mdoka" account →Specific to Mdoka
- 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 Cynotilapia sp. "Elongatus Mdoka".
The Mdoka population
Cynotilapia sp. "Elongatus Mdoka" "Mdoka" is the Mdoka population of Cynotilapia sp. "Elongatus Mdoka", a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the far northern part of the lake. It is the same species as Cynotilapia sp. "Elongatus Mdoka", distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Mdoka fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Cynotilapia sp. "Elongatus Mdoka" is an undescribed member of the Cynotilapia sp. "elongatus" species complex, a group of small mbuna set apart from typical Cynotilapia by a noticeably more slender, elongate body, recorded here from Mdoka on Lake Malawi's northern Malawian shore. The "elongatus" complex is one of several loose groupings within Cynotilapia that fragment into local colour and shape variants named for their collection point, and Mdoka — better known in the hobby as the type locality of an unrelated, strikingly patterned Maylandia (Metriaclima) population — also holds its own distinct, more slender Cynotilapia population.
Full Cynotilapia sp. "Elongatus Mdoka" account →