Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Maylandia sp. "Patricki"

Maylandia sp. "Patricki" "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 sp. "Patricki" 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 sp. "Patricki".

IUCNNOT EVALUATED
NEnot on the EX–LC scale
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size4.3 in11 cm total length
Temperature75–82 °F24–28 °C
pH7.7–8.6alkaline
Depth16–82 ft5–25 m
DietAufwuchs grazer (herbivore; forages on both rocky surfaces and sandy substrate between rocks)
BreedingMaternal mouthbrooder (polygynous; male digs burrow beneath scattered rocks on sand)~10–30 eggs
Sexual dimorphismYesMales blue-violet with orange-flushed dorsum; females plain brown. Males bear anal-fin egg-spots; females lack them. Males larger (~11 cm TL) than females (~9 cm TL).
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Mbenji Island population

Maylandia sp. "Patricki" "Mbenji Island" is the Mbenji Island population of Maylandia sp. "Patricki", 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 sp. "Patricki", 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 sp. 'patricki' is a small, sand-loving mbuna from the intermediate reefs of south-central Lake Malawi — a fish better known to specialists by its trade name than by a Latin binomial, because it has never been formally described. Males wear a lilac-blue body set against a warm orange flush across the back, making them among the prettiest of the intermediate-habitat Maylandia; females are plain brown. In the wild the species is unusual for the genus in that breeding males dig permanent burrow territories beneath scattered rocks on sandy ground rather than holding open-rock patches, giving it a behavioral profile that sits midway between the classic rock-clinging mbuna and the sand-burrowing dwarfs of the open lakebed.

Full Maylandia sp. "Patricki" account →

Sources

  1. malawi.si — Maylandia sp. "Patricki" "Mbenji Island"
  2. malawi.si — Maylandia sp. 'patricki' Mbenji Island (Konings / Bauer database)
  3. malawi.si — Maylandia sp. 'patricki': locations index (Chidunga, Fuawe, Jalo, Mbenji, Nankoma, Nkhomo)
  4. malawi.si — Mbenji Island (locality, GPS data: -12.06056, 34.593185)
  5. malawi.si — Nkhomo Reef species list (including Maylandia sp. 'patricki')
  6. Konings, A. 2016 — Malawi Cichlids in their Natural Habitat, 5th ed. Cichlid Press, El Paso (Mbenji Island; intermediate habitat and territorial behavior of sp. 'patricki')