Maylandia fainzilberi "Luwino Reef"
Luwino Reef — loo-WEE-noh REEF (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 Luwino Reef
- 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 Luwino Reef population
Maylandia fainzilberi "Luwino Reef" is the Luwino Reef population of Maylandia fainzilberi, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the far northern 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 Luwino Reef 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 "Luwino Reef"
- 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.