Maylandia callainos "Ndonga"Cobalt zebra cichlid
Maylandia callainos (Cape Kaiser, Charo, Chewere, Chidunga Rocks, Chitande Island, Katale Island, Kirondo, Lions Cove, Lundu, Lupingu, Luwino Reef, Magunga, Maison Reef, Makonde, Maleri Island, Mara Rocks, Mbowe Island, Mitande Reef (Rocks), Mkondiwa Reef, Mphanga Rocks, Nakantenga Island, Ndonga, Ngwasi, Nkanda, Nkhata Bay, Pombo Rocks, Puulu, Ruarwe, Usisya)
Ndonga — n-DOHN-gah (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 callainos account →Specific to Ndonga
- 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 callainos.
The Ndonga population
Maylandia callainos "Ndonga" is the Ndonga population of Maylandia callainos, a geographic colour form from the Tanzania coast of Lake Malawi in the northern part of the lake. It is the same species as Maylandia callainos, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Ndonga fish at malawi.si →
About the species
The cobalt blue zebra is one of the most recognizable mbuna in the aquarium trade — a small Lake Malawi rock-dweller in which males glow an even turquoise-blue, with no trace of the dark vertical bars that mark most of its relatives. Native only to the Nkhata Bay region, it has been famous since the hobby's earliest days for a quieter reason too: it is one of a handful of mbuna that humans, not geology, moved around the lake, making it a textbook case of how cichlid populations diverge after transplantation.
Full Maylandia callainos account →Sources
- malawi.si — Maylandia callainos "Ndonga"
- Stauffer & Hert (1992): Pseudotropheus callainos, a new species of mbuna (Cichlidae), with analyses of changes associated with two intra-lacustrine transplantations in Lake Malawi (original description, PDF)
- Stauffer, Bowers, Kellogg & McKaye (1997): A revision of the blue-black Pseudotropheus zebra complex, with a description of the new genus Metriaclima and ten new species
- FishBase — Maylandia callainos summary page
- malawi.si (The Cichlids of Lake Malawi) — Maylandia callainos 'Nkhata Bay' (size, depth, habitat, distribution, colour morphs)
- GBIF — Maylandia callainos (Stauffer & Hert, 1992)
- IUCN Red List — Maylandia callainos "Ndonga"