Gephyrochromis lawsi "Nkhata Bay"
Nkhata Bay — n-KAH-tah BAY (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 Gephyrochromis lawsi account →Specific to Nkhata Bay
- 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 Gephyrochromis lawsi.
The Nkhata Bay population
Gephyrochromis lawsi "Nkhata Bay" is the Nkhata Bay population of Gephyrochromis lawsi, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the central part of the lake. It is the same species as Gephyrochromis lawsi, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Nkhata Bay fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Gephyrochromis lawsi is a small, sand-combing mbuna endemic to Lake Malawi, described by Geoffrey Fryer in 1957 from Florence Bay in the lake's northern arm. Males wear an unusual livery for a mbuna — a blue-violet body washed with an orange-gold blaze along the dorsal — while the species' feeding strategy is equally atypical: it grazes loose aufwuchs from the transitional strip where rocky shorelines give way to sand, a niche that places it literally between the rock-dwellers and the sand-dwellers of the lake. The genus it represents, Gephyrochromis Boulenger 1901, takes its name from this bridging role.
Full Gephyrochromis lawsi account →Sources
- malawi.si — Gephyrochromis lawsi "Nkhata Bay"
- Fryer, G. (1957). A new species of Gephyrochromis (Pisces: Cichlidae) from Lake Nyasa, with notes on its ecology and affinities. Revue de Zoologie et de Botanique Africaines, 55(3–4): 346–352
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Gephyrochromis lawsi Fryer 1957 (species record, updated 19 May 2026)
- FishBase — Gephyrochromis lawsi Fryer, 1957 (species summary, ID 8347)
- GBIF — Gephyrochromis lawsi Fryer, 1957 (taxon key 2370840; 27 occurrence records)
- Fryer, G. (1959). The trophic interrelationships and ecology of some littoral communities of Lake Nyasa. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 132(2): 153–281