ASSORTED MBUNA CICHLID PACKS – ROCK-DWELLING MBUNA CICHLID

Choosing Mbunas can be overwhelming, so we made it easy right here. Just choose your quantity and we’ll pick you an assortment based on seasonal availability at the farm. Order more, you’ll get more varieties!

Mbuna in nature
To keep mbuna cichlids at their best, look at how and where they live in nature. 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. Malawi is a gigantic crevice. It filled with river water and fish — and these then changed, evolved and adapted to suit their new, lacustrine environment. A lake of that size comes complete with waves, rocky cliffs and sandy beaches.

Lake Malawi is the ninth largest lake in the world.

So think freshwater reef fish and you would be about right, as the colorful yellow and blue mbuna we keep bask in the clear blue, sunlit waters and live in and around the rocky outcrops. Cichlid paradise!

Maternal mouthbrooders
All the mbuna, and all the other haplochromines in Lake Malawi are maternal mouthbrooders, meaning that they lay eggs, which are then taken into the female’s mouth where they are incubated, hatched, and then finally spat out as fully formed fry.

Keep mature males and females together in the home aquarium and they will breed.
The good news about mbuna is that although there are so many species, they can all be kept in exactly the same way, eat exactly the same food, and once you have conquered keeping them for the first time you can pretty much keep any of them, as long as you observe the fundamentals.

Next is the chemistry of the water. All that tectonic plate activity under the lake has meant that Malawi is very rich in minerals, which give it a high pH, KH (carbonate hardness,) and GH (general hardness). Those with scaled-up kettles and hard tapwater will do really well with mbuna — these aren’t fish for soft, acidic water conditions. So it’s no to reverse osmosis water without adequate amounts of Malawi cichlid salts first being added, and decor should include calcareous, lime-based decor or filter media to keep those minerals high and pH, KH and GH buffered.

In the wild mbuna rarely top 7.5–10cm/3–4in total length but fed rich foods in the aquarium they can reach 12.5–15cm/5–6in. They are aggressive and territorial and you need to keep lots of them, so a large tank is a must.

To start right with mbuna a 120cm/4ft tank or larger is best.
When creating a home for mbuna, try to replicate the lake environment — deep and wide.