Who remembers art class in school? Among the first things you learn are color temperatures, right? According to this, red, yellow and orange are warm colors, while blue, green and purple are cool colors. In Lake Malawi’s rock cichlids, the mbuna, the territory-owning males usually shine in cool colors (usually blue), and the females exhibit warm colors. But there is a well-known exception: Maylandia lombardoi. Here it is just the opposite: males in bright yellow (warm), females blue (cold).
Maylandia lombardoi is only found in a few places in Lake Malawi, which is huge. Originally it comes from the coast of the Mbenji group of islands and from the Nkhomo reef, at Namalenje island there is a probably allochthonous (= originally not native there, displaced) population. This makes the species theoretically vulnerable to overfishing and environmental disasters. However, the former is not to be feared, since the aquaristic demand can be easily and much more cheaply met by captive breeding than by wild catch. We have no control over the latter here.
Maylandia lombardoi was one of the first Malawi cichlids and at that time (in the 1970s) really expensive. Many aquarists had to pay bitter lesson money, if they could buy only one pair. Because territory-owning males of M. lombardoi belong to the most aggressive mbuna at all. Nowadays all this is not so tragic. Large aquariums (from 150 cm edge length) and large groups (not less than 10 specimens, better 20) provide a fair distribution of the beating. The gender composition does not really matter. Suppressed males take on female coloration. However, they always remain recognizable by the large yellow egg spot in the anal fin, which is always missing in females. Dominant females may also develop yellow coloration. Such a troop of colorful mbuna offers a very varied picture and countless observation possibilities to the intraspecific behavior of these magnificent animals, which reach 10-12 cm length. The photographed animals are 4-6 cm long.
For our customers: the fish have code 572502 on our stocklist. Please note that we supply exclusively to wholesalers.
Text & photos: Frank Schäfer
