Mpanga red-top zebra

Care at a glance

Overview

The Mpanga red-top zebra is a mbuna from Lake Malawi that needs a proper rift-lake tank. It is a step up from the easiest fish.

Caring for the Mpanga red-top zebra

Keep Mpanga red-top zebras as a harem of one male with several females, so the male's attention is spread out. Give them at least 53 gal (200 L), packed with piled rock, caves and crevices over a sand floor. The rockwork gives them room to sort out territories.

Keep the water hard and alkaline, at 75 to 82°F (24 to 28°C) and a pH of 7.5 to 8.5. Feed a mainly vegetable diet of spirulina flake and algae-based pellets. Go easy on rich protein foods, which can harm this grazer.

Mpanga red-top zebras are social but aggressive, and they spend their time low among the rocks, grazing algae and defending a patch. Choose tank mates with care. Other robust, similarly boisterous mbuna work, but nothing shy or slow.

They are maternal mouthbrooders. After spawning, the female holds the eggs and then the fry in her mouth for several weeks, and breeding them is of medium difficulty.

Good to know

Maylandia emmiltos belongs to the cichlid family, and it is one of several red-top zebras split out of the old Pseudotropheus zebra complex. Its species name, emmiltos, refers to red ochre, for the red wash over the dorsal fin above its blue body bars.

In the wild

Maylandia emmiltos lives at Mpanga Rocks, a rocky stretch of northwestern Lake Malawi. Its home is a broken rocky shore, where these fish graze the algae film and shelter from one another.

Common questions

Related species

• 

  Fireback zebra

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• 

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• 

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• 

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• 

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• 

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