Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Cynotilapia zebroides

Cynotilapia zebroides "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 zebroides 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 zebroides.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2018
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size3.7 in9.3 cm standard length
Temperature75–82 °F24–28 °C
pH7.7–8.6alkaline
Depth0–66 ft0–20 m
DietZooplankton picker + aufwuchs grazer
BreedingMaternal mouthbrooder (cave-associated)small (~10-30 eggs; small-mbuna typical, not separately published)
Sexual dimorphismYesDominant males light blue with strong dark vertical bars into the dorsal; females and subordinate males drab beige to grey-blue, never crisply barred.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Mdoka population

Cynotilapia zebroides "Mdoka" is the Mdoka population of Cynotilapia zebroides, 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 zebroides, 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 zebroides is a small, slender, blue-and-black barred rock-dwelling cichlid (a "mbuna") endemic to Africa's Lake Malawi, described by Donald Johnson in 1975. It has been shuffled through several genera over the years — variously placed in Microchromis, Maylandia, Metriaclima, and Pseudotropheus — and most current taxonomists now file it under Cynotilapia, the change driven by its mouthful of slender, single-pointed teeth and its habit of suction-feeding on plankton out in the water column rather than scraping algae off rocks. It looks deceptively like the ubiquitous zebra mbuna of the Maylandia/Metriaclima complex, and that resemblance — combined with an aggressive, fin- and scale-nipping streak and a readiness to hybridize with those fish — is the single most important thing a keeper needs to know about it.

Full Cynotilapia zebroides account →

Sources

  1. malawi.si — Cynotilapia zebroides "Mdoka"
  2. FishBase — Cynotilapia zebroides (Johnson, 1975)
  3. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Cynotilapia zebroides (species record)
  4. GBIF — Microchromis zebroides (Johnson, 1975) [backbone synonym of Cynotilapia zebroides]
  5. malawi.si (M.K. Oliver / Ad Konings) — Cynotilapia zebroides 'Jalo Reef'
  6. malawi.si — Cynotilapia zebroides species index (variants; afra misidentification)