Maylandia aurora "Nkolongwe"
Nkolongwe — n-koh-LOHN-gweh (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 Maylandia aurora account →Specific to Nkolongwe
- 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 Maylandia aurora.
The Nkolongwe population
Maylandia aurora "Nkolongwe" is the Nkolongwe population of Maylandia aurora, a geographic colour form from the Mozambique coast of Lake Malawi in the south-central part of the lake. It is the same species as Maylandia aurora, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Nkolongwe fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Maylandia aurora is a small, sharply two-toned mbuna endemic to the northern reaches of Lake Malawi, where blue-and-gold males hold court along the seam where rocky reef meets open sand. It is the namesake of the "aurora group," a cluster of look-alike species whose females are so similar they often cannot be told apart by color alone. Long traded under three different genus names, it is a hardy, handsomely colored fish whose biggest in-tank liability is the same temper that makes it interesting in the wild.
Full Maylandia aurora account →Sources
- malawi.si — Maylandia aurora "Nkolongwe"
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Pseudotropheus/Maylandia aurora (CAS)
- FishBase — Maylandia aurora (Burgess, 1976) summary
- FishBase — Synonyms of Maylandia aurora
- The ETYFish Project — Pseudocrenilabrinae etymology (aurora)
- Ciccotto, Konings & Stauffer 2011, Zootaxa 2738 — Metriaclima aurora treatment (Plazi TreatmentBank)