Mylochromis melanotaenia "Makonde"
Makonde — mah-KOHN-deh (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 melanotaenia account →Specific to Makonde
- 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 melanotaenia.
The Makonde population
Mylochromis melanotaenia "Makonde" is the Makonde population of Mylochromis melanotaenia, a geographic colour form from the Tanzania coast of Lake Malawi in the far northern part of the lake. It is the same species as Mylochromis melanotaenia, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Makonde fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Mylochromis melanotaenia is a sand- and mud-dwelling haplochromine cichlid endemic to Lake Malawi, one of the oblique-striped "haps" that patrol the lake's softer bottoms rather than its rocky reefs. Cloaked in a diagonal dark band that gives the genus its signature look, it is a quiet, non-territorial fish thought to extract snails from their shells with stout pharyngeal teeth and thick lips — though, tellingly, no one has yet published a gut analysis to prove it. It is widespread enough to rate as Least Concern even as the lake around it comes under mounting strain.
Full Mylochromis melanotaenia account →Sources
- malawi.si — Mylochromis melanotaenia "Makonde"
- FishBase: Mylochromis melanotaenia (Regan, 1922)
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes (California Academy of Sciences)
- GBIF: Mylochromis (Regan, 1922) backbone taxonomy
- Regan, C.T. 1922. The Cichlid Fishes of Lake Nyassa. Proc. Zool. Soc. London
- Two new species of Mylochromis (Cichlidae) from Lake Malawi (J. Fish Biology, 2024)