Malawi barracuda

Care at a glance

Overview

This is a solitary hunter, so plan a big tank with open space front to back and not much clutter. Feed it a high-protein carnivore diet of frozen or live fish-based foods and good carnivore pellets. It will eat anything small enough to fit in its mouth, so tankmates need to be large and sturdy, or skip them and keep it in a species tank. Match its hard, alkaline Malawi water (pH 7.5 to 8.5).

In the wild

The Malawi barracuda lives in the open water of Lake Malawi, well away from the shoreline, chasing down smaller fish. That open-water life is the whole point with this one. It needs length and clear swimming room, not a rock maze. Give it a long tank of at least 300 liters with hard, alkaline water and temperatures in the mid 20s C.

Good to know

This is a predatory cichlid (family Cichlidae) reaching around 25 cm. The long, torpedo-shaped body and large mouth are built for running down fast prey in open water. Breeding in aquariums is essentially unrecorded. Wild populations look stable for now, but heavy fishing pressure and changes to the lake could shift that.

Did you know

Rhamphochromis are sometimes called the lake's open-water cheetahs. While most Malawi cichlids hug the rocks or sand, this genus took to the open lake and built a body shape closer to a pike or barracuda, which is unusual for the family.

Related species

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