Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Mchenga thinos

Mchenga thinos "Nkhomo Reef"

Nkhomo Reef — n-KOH-moh 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 Mchenga thinos account →

Specific to Nkhomo 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 Mchenga thinos.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2018
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size3.1 in7.8 cm standard length
Temperature75–82 °F24–28 °C
pH7.7–8.8alkaline
Depth33–82 ft10–25 m
DietFeeds over sand on zooplankton/micro-invertebrates
BreedingMaternal mouthbrooder; males build sand bowers and court at leksNot documented; genus-typical small brood of a few dozen eggs
Sexual dimorphismYesBreeding males larger with clear, yellow-flecked tail and yellow anal-fin ocelli, and bicuspid outer teeth; females and non-breeders plainer with hyaline fins
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Nkhomo Reef population

Mchenga thinos "Nkhomo Reef" is the Nkhomo Reef population of Mchenga thinos, 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 Mchenga thinos, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Nkhomo Reef fish at malawi.si →

About the species

Mchenga thinos is a small, silvery, plankton-eating cichlid endemic to Lake Malawi, one of the open-water "utaka" haplochromines that drift in shoals over the lake's sand and rubble flats. Like its relatives, the male is an architect: at the boundary where rock gives way to sand, 15 to 25 m down, he piles sand into a neat cone-shaped "bower" and courts passing females from its summit. Described in 1993 as a Copadichromis and reassigned in 2006 to the then-new genus Mchenga, it is a quiet, lake-wide species that most aquarists have never knowingly kept.

Full Mchenga thinos account →

Sources

  1. malawi.si — Mchenga thinos "Nkhomo Reef"
  2. Mchenga thinos — FishBase species summary
  3. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes (genus Mchenga, species thinos)
  4. Stauffer, LoVullo & McKaye (1993), Three new sand-dwelling cichlids from Lake Malawi (Copeia, original description)
  5. Stauffer & Konings (2006), Review of Copadichromis with the description of a new genus and six new species (FishBase reference)
  6. Stauffer & Konings (2006), Review of Copadichromis... new genus (ResearchGate record)