Protomelas sp. "Steveni Black Belly" "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 Protomelas sp. "Steveni Black Belly" 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 Protomelas sp. "Steveni Black Belly".
The Mdoka population
Protomelas sp. "Steveni Black Belly" "Mdoka" is the Mdoka population of Protomelas sp. "Steveni Black Belly", 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 Protomelas sp. "Steveni Black Belly", 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
Protomelas sp. "Steveni Black Belly" belongs to the "Steveni" complex — a well-known group of undescribed Protomelas forms, allied to the described species Protomelas taeniolatus, whose breeding males develop some of the most vivid colours of any Lake Malawi cichlid and whose different locality populations are distinguished largely by trade-name colour tags rather than formal taxonomy. This form is named for a dark patch that develops across the belly of breeding males, recorded from four sites on Malawi's west-central shore. It has never been formally described, and no formal description exists for any member of the wider "Steveni" complex.
Full Protomelas sp. "Steveni Black Belly" account →