Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Mylochromis anaphyrmus

Mylochromis anaphyrmus "Thumbi West Island"

Thumbi West Island — TOOM-bee WEST 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 Mylochromis anaphyrmus account →

Specific to Thumbi West 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 Mylochromis anaphyrmus.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2018
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size9.1 in23 cm total length
Temperature75–82 °F24–28 °C
pH7.7–8.6alkaline
Depth33–236 ft10–72 m
DietMolluscivore — crushes freshwater gastropods with molariform pharyngeal teeth
BreedingMaternal (ovophilous) mouthbrooder; polygynous, no pair bondNot formally published for this species; genus-typical for a ~15 cm female is estimated ~20–50 eggs (inferred from congeners — not a measured datum)
Sexual dimorphismYesMales markedly larger (to 23 cm) than females (to 15 cm); breeding males develop blue-silver nuptial coloration while females and non-breeding males are cryptic brownish-silver with the oblique dark band more prominent.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Thumbi West Island population

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

Colour reference: living Thumbi West Island fish at malawi.si →

About the species

Mylochromis anaphyrmus is a sand-dwelling haplochromine cichlid endemic to Lake Malawi, built around one of the most specialised diets in the lake's species flock: it excavates snails from silty sand with a set of flattened, molariform pharyngeal teeth that function like a pair of nutcrackers. Reaching around 23 cm in males, it is a stocky, subdued fish of the deeper sandy intermediate zone — barely traded, rarely seen in aquaria, but a key invertivore in the lake's benthic food web. The genus name it now carries, Mylochromis, was itself once disputed; the fish spent decades filed under the synonym Maravichromis before that name was formally sunk.

Full Mylochromis anaphyrmus account →

Sources

  1. malawi.si — Mylochromis anaphyrmus "Thumbi West Island"
  2. FishBase — Mylochromis anaphyrmus (Burgess & Axelrod, 1973)
  3. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Mylochromis anaphyrmus (species record; holotype USNM 210699)
  4. GBIF — Mylochromis anaphyrmus (Burgess & Axelrod, 1973); taxon key 2372244
  5. Burgess, W.E. & Axelrod, H.R. (1973) — New cichlids from Lake Malawi. Tropical Fish Hobbyist 22(2): 87–98 [original description]
  6. Derijst, E. & Snoeks, J. (1992) — Maravichromis Eccles & Trewavas, 1989, a junior synonym of Mylochromis Regan, 1920 (Teleostei, Cichlidae). Cybium 16(2):173