![]() ![]() Tales abound of early explorers mistaking it for an ocean, which let’s face it, you would. That’s bigger than Wales…Ī lake of that size comes complete with waves, rocky cliffs and sandy beaches. Its 360 miles long, 50 miles wide and some 11,000 square miles in area. Malawi is the ninth largest lake in the world and the second deepest, at 706m. It filled with river water and fish - and these then changed, evolved and adapted to suit their new, lacustrine environment.Īnd it’s big. Mbuna are endemic to Lake Malawi in Africa’s Great Rift Valley - a 3,700-mile long trench created by the African tectonic plate tearing apart. To keep mbuna at their best we must first look at how and where they live in nature. Image by AquariumPhoto.dk Mbuna in nature Metriaclima lombardoi is a larger, more aggressive species and is best avoided by the novice mbuna keeper. ![]() This all adds to the overall appeal of mbuna. You wouldn’t be able to keep 30 Central American species in one tank - it would be chaos - and even a community tank of fish from many different, very varied genera would struggle to hold that many because so many species need to be kept in groups of their own kind. An average mbuna community could hold 30 different species - a large tank 50 or more. No other aquarium is capable of holding as many different species of fish per volume as a Malawi cichlid tank. Next is the number of species you can keep together. Yellow and orange are common mbuna colours but importantly, and rarely for any wild-type tropical fish is blue, and this is where the mbuna excel, with literally hundreds of bright blue species, which have tricked many an onlooker into thinking these totally freshwater fish are in fact marine. One qualification any aquarium fish needs to become really popular is colour, and mbuna deliver this in swathes. The mbuna as they are known (pronounced mmm-boon-a or mu-boon-a,) are hardy, easy to keep, easy to breed, and widely available. Above: Cynotilapia afra has the mbuna's classic blue vertical bars.įishkeepers the world over struck gold with the introduction of the small colourful rock dwelling cichlids from East Africa’s Lake Malawi.
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