Eastern happy

Care at a glance

Overview

This is a tough, adaptable mouthbrooder that breeds almost on its own. It is best kept as a single fish or a pair, and if you want to raise fry, as one male with a few females rather than rival males, which fight. It works the middle and lower water and is quick to claim a patch of the tank. Males are pushy, so choose tankmates thoughtfully: sturdy, similarly robust fish, with cover and broken sightlines so females and smaller fish can escape trouble. It eats almost anything, so feed a broad diet of quality pellets, flake and frozen foods. Give it a tank of at least 250 liters with rock, some hardy plants and open swimming room.

In the wild

Astatotilapia calliptera ranges widely around the Lake Malawi basin and its feeder rivers, thriving in weedy lake margins, sluggish rivers and swamps. It is unfussy about surroundings, so a mix of rock, hardy plants and open sand suits it. The water should be hard and alkaline like its lake home, roughly 23 to 28 C at a pH from 7.2 to 8.5, though this generalist forgives a fairly wide range as long as conditions stay clean and stable.

Good to know

A haplochromine in the family Cichlidae, it reaches about 15 centimeters and is an easy maternal mouthbrooder: the female carries eggs and fry in her mouth, and males flash egg-spot markings on the anal fin during courtship. It is famous in science as well as the hobby, since whole-genome studies place this widespread generalist very close to the ancestor of Lake Malawi's huge cichlid species flock.

Did you know

A plain, adaptable river fish much like this one is thought to have seeded the explosion of cichlids in Lake Malawi, a radiation of hundreds of species; the humble prototype is still swimming in the rivers today.

Common questions

Related species

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• 

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• 

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• 

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• 

  Jewel cichlid

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