Sciaenochromis fryeri "Chiwi Rocks"Electric blue hap
Sciaenochromis fryeri (Chidunga Rocks, Chilungo Bay, Chizumulu Island, Chimwalani Reef, Chinyamwezi Island, Chiofu, Chitande Island, Chitimba Bay, Chiwi Rocks, Chizumulu Island, Chuanga, Jalo Reef, Likoma Island, Liuli, Lundu, Luwala Reef, Magunga, Maleri Island, Mbenji Island, Taiwanee Reef, Three Peaks Reef, Thumbi West Island, Yofu Bay)
Chiwi Rocks — CHEE-wee ROKS (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 Sciaenochromis fryeri account →Specific to Chiwi Rocks
- 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 Sciaenochromis fryeri.
The Chiwi Rocks population
Sciaenochromis fryeri "Chiwi Rocks" is the Chiwi Rocks population of Sciaenochromis fryeri, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the central part of the lake. It is the same species as Sciaenochromis fryeri, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Chiwi Rocks fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Sciaenochromis fryeri, the electric blue hap, is one of the most recognizable cichlids in the aquarium hobby: adult males are clad in an unbroken, metallic cobalt-blue that intensifies further during breeding. Endemic to Lake Malawi, it ranges throughout the lake's rocky and intermediate zones, hunting small cichlid fry as an ambush piscivore. For four decades the fish was traded and written up under a different name entirely — Sciaenochromis ahli — a confusion only untangled when Ad Konings described Sciaenochromis fryeri as a new species in 1993, simultaneously redefining its congener Sciaenochromis ahli as the rarer, genuinely different fish it always was.
Full Sciaenochromis fryeri account →Sources
- malawi.si — Sciaenochromis fryeri "Chiwi Rocks"
- Konings, A. 1993 — A revision of the genus Sciaenochromis Eccles & Trewavas, 1989 (Pisces, Cichlidae). The Cichlids Yearbook, vol. 3: pp. 28–36. Cichlid Press, St. Leon-Rot
- FishBase — Sciaenochromis fryeri (Konings, 1993) summary page
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Sciaenochromis fryeri species record
- malawi.si — Mbenji Island location page (GPS coordinates)
- Trewavas, E. 1935 — A synopsis of the cichlid fishes of Lake Nyasa. Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (Ser. 10) 16(91): 65–118 (original description of Haplochromis ahli)
- IUCN Red List — Sciaenochromis fryeri "Chiwi Rocks"