Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Mylochromis spilostichus

Mylochromis spilostichus "Makokola Reef"

Makokola Reef — mah-koh-KOH-lah 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 Mylochromis spilostichus account →

Specific to Makokola 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 Mylochromis spilostichus.

IUCNLEAST CONCERN · 2018
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size8.7 in22.2 cm total length
Temperature75–82 °F24–28 °C
pH7.7–8.6alkaline
Depth59–230 ft18–70 m
DietActive piscivore; chases small fish close to sandy substrate
BreedingMaternal mouthbrooderNot formally documented; habitat-typical for similar Malawi haplochromines suggests ~30–60 eggs (flagged as genus-typical inference, not a published count for this species)
Sexual dimorphismYesBreeding males iridescent blue-green with vivid yellow flank spots and bright ocellate anal fin; females and sub-adults olive-silver with subdued spotting. Males typically larger.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Makokola Reef population

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

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

About the species

Mylochromis spilostichus is a slender, mid-sized piscivore endemic to Lake Malawi, where it hunts small fish over open sandy bottoms at depths well beyond comfortable snorkelling range. Described in 1935 from a single specimen collected at Monkey Bay, it wears a distinctive diagonal chain of dark spots running from the nape to the caudal peduncle — the very feature encoded in its name. Rarely seen in trawl surveys and barely established in the aquarium trade, it is one of the lake's quieter predators: conspicuous in pattern, elusive in person.

Full Mylochromis spilostichus account →

Sources

  1. malawi.si — Mylochromis spilostichus "Makokola Reef"
  2. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Mylochromis spilostichus (species record, updated May 2026)
  3. FishBase — Mylochromis spilostichus (Trewavas, 1935)
  4. The ETYFish Project — Cichlidae part 4 (Mylochromis and spilostichus etymologies)
  5. Trewavas, E. (1935) — 'A Synopsis of the Cichlid Fishes of Lake Nyasa', Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (Ser. 10) 16(91): 65–118 [original description, p. 86, 100]
  6. Turner, G.F. & Howarth, C.M. (2001) — 'New species in the Mylochromis complex (Teleostei: Cichlidae) from Lake Malawi' [placement in Mylochromis]