Aulonocara stuartgranti "Cobwe"
Cobwe — KOH-bweh (approx.)
The fish
How this cichlid is built, and everything about how it lives, eats and breeds, is shared with the species — this page doesn't repeat it.
Read the full Aulonocara stuartgranti account →Specific to Cobwe
- Collection locality & coordinates
- Local coloration — best judged from the living-fish photo
- Kept as a single-provenance line, never crossed with other collection points
Care facts below are the species' — shared with Aulonocara stuartgranti.
The Cobwe population
The Cobwe Peacock is a location-specific population of Aulonocara stuartgranti collected at Cobwe, a rocky-sandy shoreline site on the north-western Malawian coast of Lake Malawi at approximately 10°33'S — geographically close to the Mdoka collection area but representing a genetically and phenotypically distinct population. Males develop vivid yellow-orange to orange flanks contrasting with a metallic blue head and operculum, a coloration that places this form among the warmer-toned northern stuartgranti populations. Because Aulonocara stuartgranti varies considerably in male coloration across its range, the hobby has adopted locality designations like "Cobwe" to track collection provenance and prevent the crossing of morphologically distinct lines.
Colour reference: living Cobwe fish at cichlidae.com →
About the species
Aulonocara stuartgranti, known in the hobby as Grant's peacock, is a maternal mouthbrooding cichlid endemic to Lake Malawi and one of the most familiar faces in the African-cichlid hobby. It is the archetypal "peacock": a sand-and-rock fish that hovers a few millimeters above the bottom and detects buried invertebrates with the enlarged lateral-line canals pitting its lower jaw — a sixth-sense feeding system confirmed in the lab on this very species. Across the lake it splits into dozens of vividly distinct geographic colour forms, from the orange-tailed Ngara "flametail" to the blue Usisya and Cobue, which is exactly why it is both beloved and a perennial hybridization headache for keepers.
Full Aulonocara stuartgranti account →Sources
- Konings, A. & Stauffer, J.R. Jr. (1988). Original description of Aulonocara stuartgranti
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Aulonocara stuartgranti
- Schwalbe, A.M.B., Bassett, D.K. & Webb, J.F. (2012). Feeding in the dark: lateral-line-mediated prey detection in Aulonocara stuartgranti. J. Exp. Biol. 215: 2060–2071
- Konings, A. (2016). Malawi Cichlids in their Natural Habitat, 5th ed. Cichlid Press
- IUCN Red List — Aulonocara stuartgranti (2018)
- FishBase — Aulonocara stuartgranti
- Cichlid Room Companion — Aulonocara stuartgranti
- Chavula, G. et al. (2023). Threats to Lake Malawi biodiversity. Fisheries Research