Maylandia aurora "Thumbi West Island"
Thumbi West Island — TOOM-bee WEST EYE-land (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 Thumbi West Island
- 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 Thumbi West Island population
Maylandia aurora "Thumbi West Island" is the Thumbi West Island population of Maylandia aurora, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the southern 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 Thumbi West Island 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 "Thumbi West Island"
- 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)