I wish that I had pics of one of my earlier males, dark cobalt blue in color, and a rather red anal fin. Larry Johnson, a fellow Canuck has been diving in Lake Malawi every year for close to 20 years so I checked out what he has for photos of fryeri. Check out the color in this wild fryeri's anal fin, that fin stands out even in an underwater shot taken from above.
http://www.malawicichlidimports.ca/larry/Larry Johnson,2007 Lake Malawi Safaris pg6.htm
A Likoma Island fryeri listed as being wild caught.
Certainly everyone picks what they feel is the "best" looking breeders according to their personal view, so no doubt many males over the years have been chosen due to their flashy colors, such as red anal fins. So it doesn't surprise me to see more intense coloration in specimens that have been bred domestically over several generations.
The following fish are listed as wild caught S. ahli (not fryeri) so they clearly understand that there is a difference. I will also add these look very much like what I saw in the tank here locally a number of years ago. Lighter, more silvery, more bland, than what one would expect to see. The lighting and substrate may account for part of the lighter colors, but certainly not for everything. The fish I saw locally were in a dark setting, with black background. They were also darker than the fish in the vids below.
One last thing that I will add about availability from collectors on Malawi. I recently acquired some L. caeruleus "Ruarwe" that originated from a long time cichlid vendor here in Canada. I had never seen these before, not in person, not even on a list up here. They seem to be more rare in the US as well, and a decade ago I don't think one would have saw them anywhere in North America. Yet it seems in France they have been imported for many years. One person told me that a local importer in South Africa first had them as far back as 1997, yet up until possibly very recently Ad Konings had never even seen them in the wild.
A couple of years ago Larry Johnson commented about this variant on a well known cichlid forum where her stated:
"I have dove where this fish was supposed to be captured from at Ruware (2009), with Ad Konings. Ad was shown this color morph while in Europe doing a speaking engagment and was told where to find them,,,No luck so far, but I'm sure it's there.
You either go deep or shallow and I went deep,,,I thought I had observed one fry as it went into the rocks, but no pictures to confirm this.
Ruware is at the eastern tip/point of Usisya and I'm sure this place has been passed up as not being an area with "collectable fish". At the point there is a steep mountain there, and in similar area's usually continues straight down to the bottom indicating that the area is just deep water. What we found there on closer observation was a large shelf that levels off before going deeper which is unusual. 150 feet from shore and you are in well over 120 feet of water though.
I've passed this location many times since then and we just plain ran out of time to dive there.
I'm sure they are there, it's just a matter of which end of the shelf they are on.
Maybe this year.
Cheers,Larry"
My point of sharing that is to demonstrate that even if a fish such as S ahli exists in the wild, it might never make it to an exporters list that mostly ships to the USA. In the case of the Ruarwe labs, apparently very few have focussed collecting yellow labs there over the years. With regards to S. ahli, from what I have seen (and heard over the years) it is a rather bland fish compared to the typical S. fryeri, and may not be considered worth collecting in quantity. I have no idea, just speculation on my part.
