Maylandia fainzilberi "Ikwasi"
Ikwasi — ee-KWAH-see (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 fainzilberi account →Specific to Ikwasi
- 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 fainzilberi.
The Ikwasi population
Maylandia fainzilberi "Ikwasi" is the Ikwasi population of Maylandia fainzilberi, a geographic colour form from Lake Malawi in Lake Malawi part of the lake. It is the same species as Maylandia fainzilberi, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Ikwasi fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Maylandia fainzilberi is one of Lake Malawi's most widespread and abundant "large zebra" mbuna, a robust rock-grazing cichlid that fringes the lake's eastern shore from Tanzania down into Mozambique and reappears on a stretch of the Malawian coast. Males are electric blue with bold black bars and, in most populations, a wash of gold across the chest that earns the trade name "goldbreast zebra." Its real fascination, though, lies in its variability: from reef to reef the colour changes so completely that aquarists know it under a dozen location labels, and the popular "Zebra Chilumba" of the hobby turned out to be just one more geographic form of this single, plastic species.
Full Maylandia fainzilberi account →Sources
- malawi.si — Maylandia fainzilberi "Ikwasi"
- FishBase — Maylandia fainzilberi (Staeck, 1976)
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — fainzilberi, Pseudotropheus (Staeck 1976; valid as Maylandia fainzilberi)
- GBIF — Maylandia fainzilberi (Staeck, 1976)
- ITIS — Pseudotropheus fainzilberi Staeck, 1976 (TSN 170008)
- Staeck, W. 1976. Ergebnisse einer ichthyologischen Sammelreise zum Nordende des Nyassasees (original description). Das Aquarium / Aquarium Aqua Terra 10(89): 486-492.