Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Maylandia mbenjii

Maylandia mbenjii "Mbenji Island"

Mbenji Island — m-BEHN-jee EYE-land (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 mbenjii account →

Specific to Mbenji Island

  • 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 mbenjii.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2018
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size3.5 in8.8 cm standard length
Temperature75–82 °F24–28 °C
pH7.7–8.6alkaline
Depth0–49 ft0–15 m
DietAufwuchs grazer; opportunistic planktivore
BreedingMaternal mouthbrooder~20–50 fry per brood (genus-typical estimate; not formally measured for this species — FLAGGED)
Sexual dimorphismYesMales cobalt blue with orange-red dorsal, caudal, and pectoral fins; females brown-grey with yellow to orange dorsal fin only. OB (orange-blotched) females frequent; OB and albino males occasional.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Mbenji Island population

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

Colour reference: living Mbenji Island fish at malawi.si →

About the species

Maylandia mbenjii is a small, sharply coloured mbuna endemic to a single island group in the southern half of Lake Malawi — the Mbenji Islands — where it is one of the most abundant cichlids on the rocky shallows. Males are cobalt blue with a blaze of red-orange across the dorsal fin, a combination that earned the fish the trade nickname 'Red Top Cobalt Zebra' and makes it one of the more recognisable members of the Pseudotropheus zebra complex. Despite decades of collection for the ornamental trade, wild populations around Mbenji have remained stable, partly because the island community has maintained one of the most effective community-based fisheries management regimes in all of Malawi.

Full Maylandia mbenjii account →

Sources

  1. malawi.si — Maylandia mbenjii "Mbenji Island"
  2. Stauffer, Bowers, Kellogg & McKaye 1997 — 'A revision of the blue-black Pseudotropheus zebra (Teleostei: Cichlidae) complex from Lake Malaŵi, Africa, with a description of a new genus and ten new species' (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philad. 148:189–230)
  3. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Maylandia mbenjii (Stauffer, Bowers, Kellogg & McKaye 1997) species record
  4. FishBase — Maylandia mbenjii summary page
  5. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy — Maylandia mbenjii (taxon key 2373052)
  6. The ETYFish Project — Cichlidae subfamily Pseudocrenilabrinae (l–o): Maylandia and mbenjii etymology