Maylandia xanstomachus "Chidunga Rocks"Metriaclima xanstomachus
Maylandia xanstomachus (Chidunga Rocks, Kanchedza Island, Maleri Island, Nakantenga Island, Namalenje Island)
Chidunga Rocks — chee-DOON-gah ROKS (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 xanstomachus account →Specific to Chidunga Rocks
- 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 xanstomachus.
The Chidunga Rocks population
Maylandia xanstomachus "Chidunga Rocks" is the Chidunga Rocks population of Maylandia xanstomachus, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Maylandia xanstomachus, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Chidunga Rocks fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Maylandia xanstomachus is a compact, rock-hugging mbuna endemic to a handful of islands and rocky outcrops in the southern arm of Lake Malawi — a range so narrow that the entire wild population fits within perhaps 208 mi² of open water. Males wear a blue-grey body lit up by a butter-yellow throat and chest, a colour badge honest enough to give the species its name: Greek for 'yellow throat.' Like all mbuna it is a serial grazier of aufwuchs, belligerent in defence of a spawning cave, and a maternal mouthbrooder that does all its parental work in one parent's jaw.
Full Maylandia xanstomachus account →Sources
- malawi.si — Maylandia xanstomachus "Chidunga Rocks"
- Stauffer, J.R. Jr. & J.M. Boltz (1989). Description of a rock-dwelling cichlid (Teleostei: Cichlidae) from Lake Malawi, Africa. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 102(1):8–13
- FishBase — Maylandia xanstomachus (Stauffer & Boltz, 1989)
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Maylandia xanstomachus (species record)
- GBIF — Maylandia xanstomachus (Stauffer & Boltz, 1989); GBIF taxon key 2372984
- The ETYFish Project — Family CICHLIDAE: Subfamily PSEUDOCRENILABRINAE (l–o): Maylandia xanstomachus etymology
- IUCN Red List — Maylandia xanstomachus "Chidunga Rocks"