Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Maylandia glaucos

Maylandia glaucos "Cobwe"

Cobwe — KOH-bweh (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 glaucos account →

Specific to Cobwe

  • 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 glaucos.

IUCNNEAR THREATENED · 2018
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size2.7 in6.9 cm standard length
Temperature75–79 °F24–26 °C
pH7.8–8.6alkaline
Depth0–3 ft0–1 m
DietAlgae-comber grazing the rocky Aufwuchs, with associated micro-invertebrates (trophic level ~2.4)
BreedingMaternal (ovophilous) mouthbrooderNot recorded for this species; small mbuna of this size typically ~10–30 eggs
Sexual dimorphismYesStrong: males blue-grey; females light brown with yellow fin margins.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Cobwe population

Maylandia glaucos "Cobwe" is the Cobwe population of Maylandia glaucos, a geographic colour form from Lake Malawi in Lake Malawi part of the lake. It is the same species as Maylandia glaucos, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Cobwe fish at malawi.si →

About the species

Maylandia glaucos is a small rock-dwelling mbuna cichlid known only from the rocky coast at Cobwé, on the Mozambican shore of Lake Malawi, where it was long traded under the provisional name 'Aurora Blue.' Described in 2011 by Ciccotto, Konings and Stauffer in the genus Metriaclima — treated as a synonym of Maylandia by the Catalog of Fishes — it is a member of the 'Aurora group' of slope-faced algae-combers. Its blue-grey males and yellow-trimmed brown females, together with a very small natural range, make it both a distinctive aquarium fish and a species of some conservation concern, assessed as Near Threatened.

Full Maylandia glaucos account →

Sources

  1. malawi.si — Maylandia glaucos "Cobwe"
  2. FishBase — Maylandia glaucos (Ciccotto, Konings & Stauffer, 2011) (SpecCode 65902; size, diagnosis, distribution, IUCN)
  3. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Maylandia glaucos (species record spid 71707; original name Metriaclima glaucos, authorship, type locality Cobwé)
  4. Ciccotto, P.J., A. Konings & J.R. Stauffer Jr., 2011 — Descriptions of five new species in the genus Metriaclima (Teleostei: Cichlidae) from Lake Malaŵi, Africa. Zootaxa 2738:1–25 (original description)
  5. GBIF — Maylandia glaucos (occurrence records)
  6. Catalogue of Life — Maylandia glaucos