Aulonocara stuartgranti "Gallireya Reef"
Gallireya Reef — gah-lee-REH-yah REEF (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 Gallireya Reef
- 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 Gallireya Reef population
The Gallireya Reef Peacock is a locality variant of Aulonocara stuartgranti collected from an offshore reef feature in the northern reaches of Lake Malawi, situated close to the Chilumba collection area at approximately 10°28'S. Unlike some shore-hugging stuartgranti populations, this form inhabits the rocky-sandy transition zones of a true offshore reef at depths reaching 33–98 ft, where males express orange-yellow flanks overlaid with a metallic blue head and anterior body. Hobbyists and specialist importers track it as a distinct line because its coloration and collection provenance differ meaningfully from better-known forms such as the flame-red Ngara variant or the white-lipped Mdoka fish, making geographic purity an active concern in dedicated Aulonocara breeding programs.
Colour reference: living Gallireya Reef 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