Hi BlueDempsey,

Yup, those thick lips are pretty prized Malawi Haps.

The "thick lips" variety of Malawi Haps ... there's a catch:

Apparently, these thick lips are developed due to their natural habitat: they use their heavily cushioned lips to scrape their food off sand/stone/rock/etc. If kept (& bred) in captivity and fed pellets, they will suppress (and eventually lose) this beautiful physical trait over several generations.

There are other variety of "thick lip" Malawi Haps - e.g. the popular and quite easily available Cyrtocara moorii aka "Malawi Dolphin" (surprise surprise!).

The only way you are gonna get "thick lips" is with cichlids having very close ties to their wild-caught brethen ... you can probably 'simulate' their natural feeding patterns but you'll probably end up with a 6-footer biotope setup with 3-5 fishes + lots of lights + lots of bugs in the sandbed.

Thx for sharing!

__________________
~ John ~
I am a Malawi Fan!