Mchenga thinos "Nkhomo Reef"
Mchenga thinos (Chemwezi Rocks, Chidunga Rocks, Chimwalani Reef, Mara Rocks, Mdoka, Mdowa, Nkhata Bay, Nkhomo Reef, Otter Island)
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.
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, 49–82 ft 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
- malawi.si — Mchenga thinos "Nkhomo Reef"
- Mchenga thinos — FishBase species summary
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes (genus Mchenga, species thinos)
- Stauffer, LoVullo & McKaye (1993), Three new sand-dwelling cichlids from Lake Malawi (Copeia, original description)
- Stauffer & Konings (2006), Review of Copadichromis with the description of a new genus and six new species (FishBase reference)
- Stauffer & Konings (2006), Review of Copadichromis... new genus (ResearchGate record)
- IUCN Red List — Mchenga thinos "Nkhomo Reef"