Maylandia estheare "Metangula"
Metangula — meh-tahn-GOO-lah (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 estheare account →Specific to Metangula
- 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 estheare.
The Metangula population
Maylandia estheare "Metangula" is the Metangula population of Maylandia estheare, 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 estheare, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Metangula fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Maylandia estheare is a rock-dwelling mbuna documented from the eastern shore of Lake Malawi, in the stretch of Mozambican and border coastline running from Metangula and Chilucha Reef south to Meponda and Narungu. It belongs to Maylandia, the genus that carries the lake's classic 'zebra' mbuna — vertically barred algae-grazers whose extraordinary diversification, reef by reef, is one of the textbook examples of cichlid adaptive radiation. Like most of its relatives it is a narrow-range rock endemic, its identity tied closely to a specific run of reefs rather than to the lake as a whole.
Full Maylandia estheare account →