Aquarist Atlas
↑ Collection form of Placidochromis phenochilus

Placidochromis phenochilus "Mdoka"

Mdoka — m-DOH-kah (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 Placidochromis phenochilus account →

Specific to Mdoka

  • 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 Placidochromis phenochilus.

IUCNENDANGERED · 2018
CARESNOT LISTED
Scientific size6.2 in15.7 cm total length
Temperature75–82 °F24–28 °C
pH7.7–8.6alkaline
Depth49 ft15 m
DietInvertivore; follows sand-sifting host species
BreedingMaternal mouthbrooder~20–50 fry per spawn (inferred from closely related P. sp. 'phenochilus tanzania'; no published wild count)
Sexual dimorphismYesMales grow larger with longer fins and a more pronounced jaw; females may fade from blue to pale with age. No colour dichromatism between sexes — unusual for Malawian haplochromines.
PhotographsSee photosGoogle Images →

The Mdoka population

Placidochromis phenochilus "Mdoka" is the Mdoka population of Placidochromis phenochilus, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the far northern part of the lake. It is the same species as Placidochromis phenochilus, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.

Colour reference: living Mdoka fish at malawi.si →

About the species

Placidochromis phenochilus, the white-lips cichlid of northern Lake Malawi, is a sand-dwelling haplochromine distinguished by the chalky pallor of its lips — the feature that gave it its name. Males are a deep, uniform cobalt blue against the pale sandy shallows they patrol, and the species is one of a small guild of conspicuously coloured Malawi cichlids that depends on the digging efforts of larger sand-sifters to expose its food. Endemic to the northwestern corner of the lake, it was assessed as Endangered in 2018, with the holotype taken from Vua in Karonga District over ninety years ago remaining the reference point for a fish that most aquarists know — if they know it at all — only through confusion with a Tanzanian lookalike.

Full Placidochromis phenochilus account →

Sources

  1. malawi.si — Placidochromis phenochilus "Mdoka"
  2. FishBase — Placidochromis phenochilus (Trewavas, 1935)
  3. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Placidochromis phenochilus (species record)
  4. The ETYFish Project — Cichlidae (Pseudocrenilabrinae p-y): Placidochromis phenochilus etymology
  5. Konings, A. — 'The blue sand-dwellers' in Cichlids Yearbook vol. 1 (Cichlid Press, 1991)
  6. Konings, A. 2016 — Malawi Cichlids in their Natural Habitat, 5th ed. Cichlid Press, El Paso (species account, NW localities, depth and colour data)