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Cynotilapia zebroides (formerly known as Cynotilapia afra) can be found all around the lake in the deeper rocky environments and also in intermediate zones from rocks to sand where they defend a territory between the rocks. However in daytime they create large schools to feed themselves with plankton in the water column in front of these rocks. This "white top" variant is from Likoma Island. It was a coincidence that I got this species in my tank; when we bought the group of Metriaclima sp."zebra chilumba" Maisoni (in May 2008) it appeared we had a strange male in this group. As this one was growing taller I finally could determine what kind of species it was. When this was clear I bought three females and I put them all together in the big tank in our breeding room. Meanwhile we have the first offspring swimming around. At this moment (August 2009) the male is about 8 cm and the females are between 5 and 6 cm. Up till now their behaviour is quite peaceful, except in mating-season. As soon as they want to go spawning the male is cleaning a place in a corner of this tank and defends it fiercely. Once the eggs are dropped he becomes more peaceful again and stops defending this corner and goes up between the other inhabitants of this aquarium. Lately (February 2010) we decided to sell this species because we needed some space in our aquaria. In the lake they feed mainly on plankton but also algae from the rocks. In the aquarium they are comfortable with any food. They take everything they get offered, like spirulina pellets, mysis, artemia, cyclops and shrimp-peas mix. |